Samantha Surovtsev met her husband, Roman Surovtsev, in 2017 while jet skiing.
Since then, each year, Roman Surovtsev did a check-in with ICE.
Roman Surovtsev joined the trend of others who are detained at their regularly scheduled check-ins with ICE, to meet the administration’s one-million-person annual deportation target.
The process can be slow, and most people in immigration detention and in immigration court do not have legal representation to argue the particulars of their cases.
Lee, the other attorney on Surovtsev’s case, said this process shows that the government is trying again to do something it can’t: deport Surovtsev to Ukraine.
In 2017, while jet skiing, Samantha Surovtsev met her husband, Roman Surovtsev.
Surovtsev opened up about his past when they first started dating. At the age of four, he told her, he fled the former Soviet Union as a refugee. And that after he entered a guilty plea to charges of carjacking and burglary in California as a teenager, his green card was revoked.
He explained that he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2014 after being released from prison while they attempted, but were unable, to deport him to Russia and Ukraine.
Both nations were unable to verify Surovtsev’s citizenship because he left before the Soviet Union collapsed, according to court documents that NPR examined. They were unable to provide him with the travel documents required for deportation.
From that point on, Roman Surovtsev checked in with ICE annually.
Meanwhile, the Surovtsevs’ lives paralleled those of thousands of immigrants in the United States. A. who are regarded as stateless. They started a small commercial painting business in Texas after getting married and having children.
His wife told NPR that he spent thirty minutes waiting in the parking lot, “praying that he wouldn’t be detained,” after what should have been a ten-minute errand at a kiosk at the Dallas ICE field office for one of those routine check-ins.
“There were tears involved, just not knowing what was on the other side of that appointment,” recalled Samantha Surovtsev. After that, she received a call saying, “I became very anxious. It said, “This is a call from a detainee,” which made me panic. ‘”.
In an effort to reach the administration’s yearly goal of deporting one million people, Roman Surovtsev joined the number of people who are being held at their routine ICE check-ins.
“Human element”.
The unique aspect of his case is that his wife has assembled a group of attorneys to represent him. As part of its mass deportation agenda, the Trump administration has promised to deport hundreds of people, but Surovtsev has the opportunity to present his case before a judge.
His wife stated that “people need to understand that there’s a human element involved with immigration, that every story is unique.”. “Every case ought to be presented before a judge. There is more to this than meets the eye. “,”.
According to court documents and the attorneys for the Surovtsevs, ICE has made a second attempt to deport Roman to Ukraine, which lacks the necessary paperwork to verify his citizenship and may consider enlisting him in a war. His attorneys contend in court documents that there is “not a significant likelihood that Roman would be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future” and that his re-detention is unconstitutional because nothing has changed to facilitate his deportation to his birthplace. “.
At the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Texas, the ridiculousness of his circumstances was brought to light. Venezuelan migrants were also held at the detention facility in north Texas, which was overcrowded this summer.
In a court filing, Zachery Hagerty, the deportation officer handling Surovtsev, stated that he provided him with deportation travel documents in Ukrainian. Fluent in English, Surovtsev is not able to read or speak Ukrainian.
According to court documents, the Justice Department, which represents the government in these cases, stated that the re-detention is lawful since it has asked Ukraine for new travel documents once more.
According to Hagerty’s declaration, he thinks Surovtsev could be sent to a third country, if not Ukraine.
A request for comment regarding his particular case was not answered by the Department of Homeland Security.
His legal team has since been successful in having his criminal conviction for carjacking revoked, claiming that when he first entered a guilty plea as a teenager, he was not made aware of the implications for his immigration status.
“This is not a difficult question. One of the firms working on the case, Lee and Godshall-Bennett, has a partner named Eric Lee who stated that it is not a discretionary matter. “The administration’s continued attempts to deport him to a nation where his removal would essentially be a death sentence are all the more pathetic and ridiculous given that he will soon receive his green card back. “.
following the due process.
In the more than two months that Surovtsev has been detained, he has missed his mother’s recent health problems, his wedding anniversary, and the birthdays of his wife and daughter. As a result of his wife Samantha having to cancel roughly two months’ worth of painting jobs, their two employees are currently unemployed.
“I turn down about five work leads every day, telling customers that there is a family emergency,” she told NPR. Rather, she has been working with a number of lawyers nationwide to overturn her husband’s conviction, get his green card back, and get him out of jail.
Supporters of immigration have claimed that the Trump administration’s quick strategy to boost deportations and arrests diminishes the little due process that newcomers receive. According to them, part of the purpose of due process is to reduce the possibility of errors and keep someone from being kicked out when they might have good reason to stay.
Attorneys claim that the Trump administration has taken actions that compromise due process. The president claimed earlier this year that not everyone he wants to remove could be tried.
Despite judges’ orders for immigrants to return to their case, immigration officers have been instructed to make arrests in court. Additionally, immigrants who entered the country illegally must be detained while they go through the legal process, according to a directive from the Homeland Security Department.
However, a lot of people are in this predicament. Chris Godshall-Bennett, a constitutional and civil rights lawyer and another of Surovtsev’s attorneys, stated that there have been multiple habeas cases filed over the summer on very similar facts regarding re-detention. He was referring to the legal process by which individuals can argue that their detention is illegal.
The procedure can be drawn out, and the majority of those in immigration court and detention lack legal counsel to present their cases. According to Lee, the other lawyer involved in Surovtsev’s case, this procedure demonstrates that the government is attempting once more to deport Surovtsev to Ukraine, something it is unable to accomplish.
