Roman Surovtsev was immediate in selecting up his two daughters from college each afternoon.
It’s necessary to him to be there for his smiley 3- and 5-year-old women, peppering them with questions on what they realized and who they performed with.
At residence together with his spouse Samantha, he would at all times be facilitating the bubbles at tub time, meticulously brushing out tiny blonde and brunette ponytails, and tucking the guffawing women into mattress after studying to them.
But giggles have grown quiet as the younger women marvel what occurred to their loving dad, who, in their eyes, merely vanished this summer season. The women haven’t seen him in 107 days.
Surovtsev was unexpectedly detained throughout a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on August 1, and by no means got here residence. Now, it’s unclear when his household will see him once more as the father of two realized simply days in the past of his imminent deportation on Monday to Ukraine, a rustic ravaged by battle, and one he hasn’t lived in because it was a part of the Soviet Union.
His detainment stems from President Donald Trump’s willpower to arrest and deport undocumented migrants en masse – an effort fracturing families throughout the nation as communities watch their staff, schoolchildren and church members be swept up by ICE.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t reply to a NCS request for touch upon Surovtsev’s detainment.
Surovtsev had by no means a lot as skipped an occasion at the women’ college earlier than lacking his oldest daughter’s fifth birthday later in August. He was nonetheless absent for his spouse’s birthday a month later, then their marriage ceremony anniversary, and quickly to be the holidays – Surovtsev’s favourite time of yr to spend together with his household.
Samantha has been telling her younger daughters their dad is at work, and gave their oldest a locket together with his image inside after he was detained. She’s been sporting it extra usually in current days, her mom stated, asking the picture inside, “Daddy, come home.”
“They’re too little to understand, and there’s no way to tell them without making them fearful of their own country,” Samantha stated by way of tears. She and the women have been dwelling on financial savings as they accumulate lawyer charges, and she stated she appears like she’s going by way of life as a single mother.
In a court docket submitting on Wednesday, the Department of Justice confirmed it has organized for Surovtsev to be eliminated to Ukraine on Monday. His attorneys say 82 different immigrants shall be on Surovtsev’s flight with the similar destiny, and concern for his or her security in wartime Ukraine.
“I’m afraid that my life will be taken in this war, and my girls are going to have to grow up without their dad, my wife is going to have to be a widow, and I myself will lose my life in a war that I know nothing about,” Surovtsev stated in a video reviewed by NCS his spouse recorded throughout certainly one of his calls to her from detention.
Surovtsev discovered love, work and God after escaping Soviet rule
Surovtsev was born in the USSR metropolis of Zhdanov – which has since been renamed Mariupol in present-day Ukraine – in 1984. After his father, a Chernobyl nuclear energy plant employee, died from radiation poisoning after it exploded, Surovtsev fled the USSR at 4 years outdated together with his mom and two siblings.
The household got here to the US lawfully, forfeiting their USSR citizenship, and slept in a San Francisco church for six months earlier than settling additional north in Sacramento, court docket filings present. But poverty adopted them throughout California.
Surovtsev was a younger youngster when he started stealing small toys in an effort to conceal that his household was poor, court docket filings present, and he was round 7 years outdated when he began serving to his mom work by cleansing houses and legislation workplaces. What adopted was a boyhood marked by struggles to get by in his adopted nation.
In 2003, at 19 years outdated, Surovtsev started serving a 13-year sentence after serving to some pals commit an armed carjacking of a bike.
Surovtsev was launched early on good habits in 2014. Following his sentence, an immigration court docket decide ordered him to be deported, costing him his inexperienced card. He was positioned into ICE custody however in the end launched by the US authorities on an order of supervision, after it decided it wasn’t possible he can be faraway from the nation anytime quickly, and in that case, continued detention can be illegal, in accordance to court docket filings.
Without USSR citizenship or a inexperienced card, Surovtsev has since lived his life as a stateless person with a piece allow, routinely checking in with ICE. He’s by no means violated the phrases of his supervision order, his attorneys stated in court docket filings.
As his household discovered aid from Soviet rule in the United States, Surovtsev additionally discovered love, gratifying work, and God.
In his early twenties, Surovtsev was baptized in jail. When he got here to Christ, all the pieces modified, his spouse stated. He met Samantha in 2017 whereas jet snowboarding with mutual pals in Orange County. The two married, purchased a house in a suburb north of Dallas, began a portray enterprise collectively and welcomed their two women.
“He created a life here, and he’s being ripped away from it,” she stated. “The person he is on paper is not the person he is now. Twenty years have passed since he committed that crime and a lot of life has been lived.”
Between juggling the household enterprise and elevating his daughters, Surovtsev was coaching to be a part of a jail ministry the place he might journey to jails providing non secular providers and help for detainees.
Then, he was detained himself.
At the Bluebonnet and Prairieland Detention Facilities in Texas he’s been held at since August, Surovtsev’s religion hasn’t wavered, his spouse stated. He leads a nightly Bible research together with his fellow inmates.
Since he anticipates boarding a flight to Ukraine Monday, the group held an additional session this weekend to rally round him in prayer yet one more time.
“On Monday, the US government plans to deport 83 people to Ukraine where they will be conscripted into the army and likely killed. Ukraine is a police state where the population lives under martial law,” Surovstev’s attorneys Eric Lee and Chris Godshall-Bennett stated in an emailed assertion.
Neither DHS nor the Ukrainian Embassy responded to NCS requests for touch upon the flight to Ukraine.
“Among the detainees are individuals who have lived in the US since they were kids. Many have US citizen spouses and children,” the attorneys wrote. “Some do not even speak Ukrainian, and others are not even Ukrainian citizens, having been born in the Soviet Union before Ukraine existed as a separate country.”
Surovstev doesn’t communicate or learn Ukrainian. Having fled at such a younger age, Surovstev has little or no reminiscence of the former Soviet city the place he was born, his spouse stated.
Surovstev’s birthplace, present-day Mariupol, Ukraine, has endured a few of the most devastating strikes and sieges from Russia throughout the battle. The metropolis’s infrastructure and housing have been almost entirely destroyed, civilians undergo starvation, and 1000’s have been killed or displaced. Despite reconstruction efforts being promoted by Russian authorities, the metropolis stays closely broken.
The US authorities had run into bother making an attempt to deport Surovtsev earlier than.
Having been born in the former Soviet Union, the Russian Consulate informed the US authorities in early 2015 it had no data of Surovtsev, his attorneys wrote in court docket filings. The Ukrainian authorities additionally stated at the time it couldn’t affirm his citizenship and subsequently couldn’t concern him Ukrainian journey paperwork.
Subsequently, Surovtsev was launched from ICE custody in May 2015 with out his inexperienced card however with an employment authorization doc, a piece allow, and was required to put on an ankle monitor for six weeks. He checked in with ICE each different week earlier than his visits turned quarterly, then annual.
“Often when he met with officers, he was told that ICE had made a new attempt to contact the embassy of either Ukraine, Russia or both, but that either or both governments had refused to grant him travel documents,” his attorneys wrote in court docket filings.
For years, he checked in at the kiosk of the Dallas ICE workplace, confirming particulars like his deal with and any journey plans. But on August 1, he was unexpectedly detained, and an officer refused to settle for his keep of elimination from his immigration counsel who accompanied him to the appointment, his attorneys write in court docket filings.
But now it’s unclear what documentation Ukraine could have for Surovtsev’s deportation or what modified from a decade in the past, when the nation couldn’t show his citizenship.
“In 2014 and 2015, ICE tried and failed to deport Mr. Surovtsev to Ukraine when the Ukrainian consulate told them it couldn’t prove he was a citizen,” Lee, the lawyer, stated in a press release. “Now we are told Ukraine is giving ‘temporary passports’ to detainees, whatever that means. To this day Ukraine has never acknowledged Mr. Surovtsev is a citizen.”
DHS didn’t reply to NCS’s request for touch upon Surovtsev’s detainment.
“He’s always complied, but we knew that maybe something would be different this year, just because of what was going on with this immigration crackdown,” his spouse stated. “We didn’t think that this would be our reality.”
His detainment mobilized Samantha, when she stated she turned his “assistant full-time” as she tirelessly drafted a authorized group to get him out.
His attorneys efficiently vacated Surovstev’s carjacking cost, basically wiping it from his report, and could have him plead to a lesser cost that doesn’t have immigration penalties.
This change in circumstances would justify reopening his case, which his group has filed for, Surovstev’s immigration lawyer Jennifer Rozdzielski stated, and Surovstev’s lawful everlasting resident standing can be restored if a decide agreed to dismiss it.
All his household and authorized group can do is watch for the case to be heard, however it sits in a heavy queue of comparable motions. There is no expedited course of at the immigration court docket degree, Rozdzielski stated.
“As a result of securing post-conviction relief for a past crime, he is likely to receive his green card once again very soon. And he has also not been given the opportunity to express his fear of being deported to an active warzone,” Surovstev’s attorneys Lee and Godshall-Bennett stated.
The flight to Ukraine is poised to take off earlier than a decide might make any new rulings. The movement was filed on November 4, and his lawyer estimates a two- to three-month timeline.
“Our family, our community and our country is not better off with him gone,” Samantha stated. “Even if he’s remaining in detention, we just want time for our case to be heard. That’s all we want.”