Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Mexico, Canada refuse to accept Russian family

An immigration attorney working on behalf of a Las Vegas family of figure skaters facing deportation to their native Russia said her desperate efforts to get another country to accept them have been rejected.

Anna Petrachenkova, her husband, Vladimir Khatin, and their 11-year-old son, Timofey, are scheduled to be deported from the Las Vegas office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 26.

They have not packed their belongings. No decisions have been made about what to do with the four-bedroom home they bought a year ago near the intersection of Charleston and Decatur boulevards. Even the fate of the family dog, a Chinese Shar-Pei named "Churka," is uncertain.

Audra Behne, an immigration attorney in Southern California, said Tuesday she has so far been unsuccessful at negotiating the family's entry into Mexico or Canada. Both countries have refused requests based on the family's past immigration woes in the United States, Behne said.

"I do think they're going to hit some resistance based on their history," Behne said.

Their "history" includes a bitter four-year legal battle for political asylum from the United States, which ended with a denial from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

With the chances of their avoiding deportation appearing to dwindle daily, Petrachenkova said she is trying to help her husband and son accept that they may have to leave the place they've all come to love.

"She (Behne) said if we have to go out of the United States she will try to find a more comfortable country (than Russia)for us," Petrachenkova said. "But if you have no job, no money and don't know anybody, it's uncomfortable."

The family was originally slated for their forced return to Russia in March but won a three-month reprieve after Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., intervened.

Porter secured the stay in order to give the family extra time to wrap up their affairs and prepare for the return to Russia. But Petrachenkova said she's spent much of the past 10 weeks searching unsuccessfully for any means that will keep her family in the United States.

The family first arrived in the United States five years ago, touring with the "Moscow Stars on Ice." When their visas expired, Khatin and Petrachenkova sought political asylum on the grounds that they were being extorted and threatened by thugs and gangsters in their Russian hometown.

But U.S. officials, including the federal court, ruled that the fear of extortion did not meet the threshold for political asylum.

Marie Wallace, an administrator at Odyssey Charter School where Timofey is a student, said she fears if the family is forced to return to Russia officials in that country might block their return to the United States as punishment for drawing media attention both here and abroad.

"If they go back they will in danger, I believe that," Wallace said.

There have been a few bright spots mixed in with the dark days of worry. Timofey, who competes on the amateur junior figure skating circuit, was recently recognized by Odyssey for his academic excellence.

"Ironically he's not a citizen but he won the citizenship award," Petrachenkova said.

The Russian Embassy in San Francisco issued Timofey's new passport, which was promptly seized by U.S. Customs officials during the family's status meeting last month. Petrachenkova and Khatin's new Russian passports have not yet arrived which could mean a delay of the deportation date.

"We can't return anyone to a country until we have the travel documents from the receiving nation," said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Kice said she couldn't speak specifically about the Las Vegas family's case, it isn't unusual for a person's passport to be held by customs officials when an involuntary deportation order is pending.

That's to reduce opportunities for the travel document to be misplaced or misused, Kice said.

Members of the local figure skating community, including families whose children study with Petrachenkova and Khatin at the Las Vegas Ice Center, have offered support. More than 2,000 signatures were collected on a petition urging Nevada's congressional delegation to block the deportation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who helped block the deportation of two Armenian girls living in Las Vegas with their father, a legal U.S. resident, has declined to become involved in the Russian family's case. Requests for help from the offices of Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., have gone unanswered, Petrachenkova said.

A spokeswoman for Porter's office said the congressman has offered his assistance to the family if they apply to re-enter the United States.

Las Vegas attorney Jeremiah Wolf Stuchiner, who represented the family before the federal court, said he urged his clients to return to Russia while they were still classified under "voluntary" status and then seek new visas by trading on their specials skills as artists.

But Petrachenkova and Khatin rejected that advice. And their decision to fight their deportation may have long-term consequences for their hopes of returning to America at a later date.

In the mid-1990s Congress amended immigration law to make it more difficult for people who are deported to seek reentry to the United States. Individuals who are found to be in the country illegally and are deported cannot apply to return for a minimum of five years, Kice said. The bar on reapply can be as long as 10 years, depending on how length of the person's illegal stay in the United States, Kice said.

"The point (of the bar) was to discourage people from overstaying their visas, coming here illegally or ignoring the law," Kice said. "The sanction and penalty for doing so is risking your ability to come back here in the future."

It is possible to seek a waiver of the bar following an involuntary deportation order and ask to return to the United States. Requests for waivers are considered on a case-by-case basis, Kice said.

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