A family torn apart: Man’s wife, stepson are deported in unusual case

Monday, June 6, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.

Harry Ridge, who says he is a God-fearing man, found himself on a recent morning praying for a federal immigration official who was due to make a decision about deporting his wife and stepson to Suriname, a small country in northern South America.

"I got this message to do it. I was pouring out my heart, asking God to bless (him) and his family," Ridge said in his North Las Vegas home last week.

It didn't help.

Last Wednesday morning at about 10:30, an aide to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., phoned him to say Cornelly "Nelly" Ridge, his "true love," and Kevin Jungerman, the 18-year-old Bonanza High graduate whom Harry Ridge calls his son, were gone.

By the next morning, Nelly was being detained and stripped of her passport by Suriname's military police.

Her story in the United States began more than a decade ago when she sought political asylum in New York because she feared the political violence in Suriname.

The plane ride back to Suriname ended a countdown that began May 17 when the three of them, a family since Ridge and Nelly were wed on Valentine's Day last year, walked into the Las Vegas office of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, expecting to walk out as a family united in the United States.

"He walks in on a nice sunny morning thinking they'll all walk out with a green card in a few hours and have a nice big breakfast," said Peter Ashman, immediate past chairman of the local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the family's lawyer.

But immigration officials discovered a deportation order dating to 1995, and Nelly and Kevin were detained. Ridge hasn't seen them since.

"In five minutes, my life was over," he said.

Ridge said they didn't know the order existed and that Nelly was the victim of bad advice from a New York immigration lawyer 10 years ago. He said they were also given bad advice recently when they were filling out paperwork, went to a local nonprofit organization that offers help with immigration law and were told that the earlier history -- the political asylum application, rejection and appeal -- would not affect their current applications.

He spent the last two weeks contacting Nevada's senators, lobbying everyone he could, seeking, with his lawyer, to get 30 days to show that the order of deportation was given under unjust circumstances.

He said that as a former infantryman who served six years in the U.S. Army, and with a host of family members in the military -- including a son from a previous marriage who is in the Air Force -- he feels betrayed by his country.

Now he says he's living on water, bread -- and nicotine. He had quit smoking six months ago but went back to the habit while trying to cope with the pressure of losing his wife and Kevin.

It wasn't so long ago when his future looked very different, as did those of his wife and stepson, he said.

Cheeks dotted with tears, Ridge laid out photos on a glass table in their cavernous home late last week -- photos of when they first met in 2003, a trip to Hawaii, the wedding last year.

Ridge, who sells new homes for Lennar Homes, first met Nelly at a pool party thrown by his friend Roy, who also sells new homes and is married to Nelly's sister. Nelly's sister is a legal resident, a step below citizenship.

"I watched her (Nelly) all night," he recalled.

A courtship ensued and when the moment to pop the question came, Ridge decided to ask Kevin for permission.

"I went to him and said, 'Can I marry your mom?' "

With most of her family in Suriname, he said, "He was the only one I could go to."

At the same time, he said, "My heart went out to him -- he lost his dad early and I felt so much admiration for him."

Kevin's father died when he was about 12, Ridge said.

"I said I could never take the place of his father, but I would always be there for him."

He laid out Kevin's high school diploma, mentioned his stepson's job at Sears and future plans to study graphic design.

When told he sounded like a proud father, Ridge replied, "He's like my own son."

He never thought he'd be getting a letter from Kevin at the North Las Vegas jail in which the teen asked, "What's political asylum?"

After Nelly and Kevin were detained May 17, though Ridge never was able to obtain permission to visit either of them, he spoke frequently on the phone with them and explained some of the background of Nelly's case -- as he understood it -- to Kevin.

He also corresponded with them several times.

And Kevin, whose room at home has a bed made by him, two turntables, posters on the walls and nothing out of place, explained to his stepfather about life behind bars, including the fights between gang members and jail cell methods of making moonshine.

Meanwhile, Ridge tried to marshal support from any quarter he could -- including Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. Ridge had seen how Reid intervened personally at the last minute in January in a case involving two teenaged sisters who were scheduled for deportation to Armenia.

Neither Ensign nor Reid would comment to the Sun about Ridge's case, however.

Ashman, meanwhile, sought to obtain records from New York on Nelly's decade-old case. Nelly told him she had appealed the government's rejection of her request for political asylum. She said she was then told by her attorney not to go to court at the time because the attorney would seek a continuance. She said she received the deportation order when her lawyer also didn't show in court.

In recent days, with the clock ticking toward deportation, Ashman filed for a stay on the deportation order, but said he never got a reply.

As for Nelly, it's impossible to know what she believed about her status during the years that followed her initial case in court. But it is clear that she continued working -- she had received permission, a Social Security card and identification while her case was pending -- paid taxes, and never concealed her identity from the government, Ridge said.

Nonetheless, as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said, "People in the country illegally need to understand that they could be detained at any time."

"The law is the law and we're just trying to enforce it."

But Ashman said this case is another example of what he calls "a broken system that separates families and punishes people far beyond what they should be."

He also is planning next steps, which may mean seeking what's called humanitarian parole, particularly given the unstable political climate in Suriname.

Meanwhile, the weekend began with Nelly gathering rainwater in her hometown in Suriname for her and Kevin to take a shower, her husband said. Nelly and Kevin's family in Suriname has no running water.

She had obtained her passport anew Friday morning and was released from an interview by military police with a warning to stay out of trouble -- which probably means not to get involved with back-and-forth political rivalries that are still simmering from her life years ago.

Suriname, though small, is surprisingly diverse, and conflict splits along black, Dutch and Asian lines.

Ridge believes things didn't go worse for Nelly with the police because he phoned a U.S. consular official at 10 p.m Thursday -- 2 a.m. in Suriname -- to explain his family's story, and his belief that his wife was in danger.

Nelly's original asylum claim was based on fears that arose during a period of military coups and guerrilla violence that began in the '80s and continued into the early '90s. She worked in a government office from which documents were stolen, she wrote in her 1995 asylum application.

The same political figures struggling for power back then faced off again in presidential elections held in May. The results are still being contested.

That's why Ridge was even more nerve-wracked about his wife and stepson's immediate future.

But apparently a U.S. official's call helped, since Nelly told her husband that military police were hands-off with her, he said.

"They told her, 'You must know a lot of people ... We'll be watching you.' "