Woman flies to India to retrieve husband

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1999 | 11:16 a.m.

When the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported her husband, Suresh, to his native India nine months ago, Genie Goel vowed not to rest until she got him back.

Last night, she rested.

"I'm tired, I'm exhausted, but I am very happy that I won. I beat the government," Genie Goel, 46, said shortly after arriving Monday morning at Los Angeles International Airport with her 42-year-old husband.

The couple spent Monday night at their Las Vegas apartment following a two-day flight from New Delhi, India. It was their first night together in their own home since the federal government deported him last December.

The Goel saga first made headlines in May 1998 when INS agents arrested Suresh Goel for being in this country illegally. Suresh, called Sam by his friends, said he fled India 10 years earlier to escape political persecution.

Though the Goels were married in Las Vegas in July 1997, the INS refused to recognize it as legitimate, ruling that it was a marriage of convenience since it took place while he was facing deportation.

Immediately after Suresh Goel's arrest, his wife launched a relentless campaign to have the deportation decision reversed, a campaign that intensified after he was sent home.

"They told me it would be five to 10 years before he could return," Genie Goel said.

She is patient, but not that patient.

Genie Goel pleaded her case with elected officials from Nevada to Virginia. She took her cause to the media. She ran up thousands of dollars in telephone bills -- at one point having her phone disconnected because she couldn't afford to pay.

In February, two months after Suresh Goel was deported, the INS reversed its decision and ruled that the couple's marriage was legal -- thus qualifying him to return to America.

But Genie Goel's battle did not end with the INS decision. It only became more frustrating. Even though the American government said Goel could return, Indian officials claimed they had not received notice of approval from the INS and refused to approve his immigration.

Month after month Genie Goel talked to politicians and the INS.

Finally, in desperation, last month she decided to hand-carry INS documents to the American embassy in India.

She arrived there Aug. 20 and three days later her husband was granted the right to return to his adopted country.

"Before I went over there, the Indian officials said they couldn't find any of his paperwork. They said they didn't have it, they didn't receive it -- this and that. But when I got in their face, they had it," she said.

They had to wait a couple of weeks for a flight home or they would have been here sooner, Genie Goel said.

While in New Delhi, they mostly stayed sequestered in a tiny one-room apartment.

"I am feeling very good at this time," Suresh Goel said, too overcome with emotion to say much about his long ordeal.

Genie Goel, who has a heart condition that prevents her from working, said after her husband gets squared away with the INS in Las Vegas, he will find a job and try to pay off the debts that have piled up in the past 16 months.

"We owe over $10,000," she said. "I don't know how we will ever get caught up, but the important thing is that Sam is back home."