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Denver: Procedures underway to deport Armenians

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  • Denver: Procedures underway to deport Armenians

    Denver Post, CO
    Nov. 4, 2004

    Procedures underway to deport Armenians

    By Nancy Lofholm
    Denver Post Staff Writer

    Deportation proceedings will begin today for several Armenians who have
    fought to remain in Ridgway, their adopted home on the Western Slope.

    Four members of the Sargsyan family have received notices requiring
    them to show up at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
    detention center in Aurora, where they will be held until they can be
    sent back to Armenia - a place where they say they face persecution.

    Two others continue to fight deportation in separate cases.

    The family's members have waged a six-year legal battle to stay in the
    U.S., where they have become valued members of the Ridgway and Ouray
    communities.

    The Sargsyans' attorneys say they still hope to stop the deportation by
    obtaining visas for foreigners who have been the victims of human
    trafficking.

    But immigration officials say the legal process has run its course.


    "The bottom line ... is that there is a final rule of order, and it's
    time for them to be going home now," said Doug Maurer, Aurora field
    office director for the immigration department.

    The Sargsyans' effort to be accepted in a new country began in 1994
    when Nvart Sargsyan was 19. She married 53-year-old American Vaughn
    Huckfeldt, who was working in the Armenian capital of Yerevan and was
    purported to be a wealthy minister.

    Huckfeldt brought Nvart to the U.S. when she was nearly nine months'
    pregnant. She discovered he didn't have a home, and said he began
    abusing her. Several Ridgway residents said they witnessed that abuse,
    but Huckfeldt was never convicted of a crime.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the Sargsyan family were being threatened in
    Armenia by people who the Sargsyans said gave Huckfeldt money to obtain
    visas that never came through.

    Huckfeldt, who reportedly is living in Germany and could not be
    reached, eventually obtained student visas for the Sargsyans, and they
    came to Ridgway early in 1999. They said they did not understand their
    visas required them to attend school.

    Nvart filed for divorce that year and Huckfeldt responded by notifying
    immigration authorities that the family was in the country
    fraudulently.

    Since that time, the family has fought through a snarl of courts and
    through tightened regulations under the Department of Homeland
    Security.

    Nvart remarried and, as the wife of an American citizen, is trying to
    obtain a green card. Family matriarch Susan Sargsyan was not included
    in today's deportation ruling because she has not exhausted all of her
    appeals.

    Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for immigration and customs, said the
    community support for the Sargsyans will not affect their deportation.

    "The public need to understand that regardless of whether they have
    made a contribution to the community they are not above the law," she
    said.
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