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The Trump administration wants to deport a million people a year and is placing tens of thousands in immigration detention. As part of the strategy, immigration officers are arresting and detaining those whom the government had previously tried and failed to deport. NPR's immigration policy reporter, Ximena Bustillo, has been following the case of one such detainee.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Samantha Surovtsev met her husband, Roman, in 2017, while jet skiing that summer when they started to date.
SAMANTHA SUROVTSEV: He told me about his past and his convictions, and, of course, I had a lot of questions.
BUSTILLO: When he was a teenager, Surovtsev pleaded guilty to carjacking charges. He spent a few years in prison, and the green card he had received after coming to the U.S. as a young refugee from the former Soviet Union was revoked. When he was released in 2014, he was handed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
SUROVTSEV: He told me, around that time, that he had spent time in ICE detention. He was a stateless person and that he couldn't be deported anywhere but checks in every year.
BUSTILLO: The Surovtsev's lives followed the path of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. who are considered stateless. They got married, had kids and launched a small commercial painting business in Texas. But after President Trump won the election and there were reports of immigrants being detained at their check-ins, the couple started to worry.
SUROVTSEV: There was also fears about detention. Where would he be? How would I be able to contact him? Could I contact him? There were so many unknowns that I could barely function. I was just shaking, fearful, crying. And I'm trying to keep it together for my kids' sake so that they wouldn't know what was going on. It was really hard.
BUSTILLO: The morning of the appointment, they arrived early.
SUROVTSEV: He doesn't even check in with an officer anymore. He was downgraded to a kiosk because of his situation. It was just basically verifying your information and then walking out. But after about 10 minutes had passed, I knew something else was going on.
BUSTILLO: Roman Surovtsev was detained that day at the Dallas ICE field office and eventually transferred to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in north Texas. His wife, Samantha, lawyered up. And since he was detained, lawyers have successfully vacated the carjacking conviction, setting Roman on a path to get his green card back. But they say ICE is still trying to deport him to Ukraine, a country that has not provided any travel documents to return him and is in active war with Russia. Here's Eric Lee, a partner at one of the law firms handling the case.
ERIC LEE: He's going to get his green card back in a matter of time, which only makes it all the more callous and absurd that the administration continues to try and remove him to a country to which removal is effectively going to be a death sentence.
BUSTILLO: Court filings reviewed by NPR showed that ICE tried to provide documentation to Roman, but in Ukrainian, a language he does not speak. Chris Godshall-Bennett, a constitutional and civil rights attorney on the case, said Surovtsev is not the only one detained after ICE had let them go.
CHRIS GODSHALL-BENNETT: There are lots of people in this situation, and there have been several habeas cases filed over the summer on very similar facts, a re-detention.
BUSTILLO: Habeas is the legal avenue for people to claim that their detention is unlawful. In court filings, ICE argues that he can be detained because they're trying to get the travel documents for Ukraine. In many ways, Surovtsev's case is unique. Not everyone has this level of legal representation, for example. But in other ways, his case highlights what his wife said every immigrant should have, the due process to argue that they should stay. Here is Samantha.
SUROVTSEV: People need to understand that there's a human element involved with immigration, that every story is unique. Every case deserves to be heard in front of a judge. This is not a black-and-white situation.
BUSTILLO: In the more than two months that Surovtsev has been in detention, he's missed his wedding anniversary, his wife and daughters' birthdays and his mother's recent health issues. ICE did not respond to NPR's request for comment on Surovtsev's detention, and he remains there while he navigates this complicated legal landscape.
Ximena Bustillo, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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