Family of skaters fears deportation to Russia

By Emily Richmond

Friday, March 11, 2005 | 11:06 a.m.

It's been five years since 11-year-old Timofey Khatin lived in Russia, but he said Thursday he knows "bad things" could happen if his family is deported from Las Vegas, as U.S. Immigration Services has ordered.

"The police there are made up of gangsters and robbers," said Timofey, who, like his parents before him, is a competitive figure skater and currently trains at the Las Vegas Ice Center on Flamingo Road off Interstate 215. "They think we're rich and they came to our house with guns and broke down the door. They want money and they'll kill us if they don't get it."

After four years of court hearings and appeals, the family's request for political asylum was turned down. A Feb. 16 letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified the family to be ready for a March 24 deportation back to Russia.

"There is no administrative relief which may be extended to you and it is now incumbent upon Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce your departure from the United States," the letter states.

Timofey's mother, Anna Petrachenkova, said the scenario painted by her son is not the product of an overactive imagination.

"It's not like here where there are rules and laws to protect people," Petrachenkova said. "We would be at the mercy of very bad men if we go back."

The family contacted the office of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Wednesday. Reid's office confirmed that the letter had been received but that it was too soon to comment on the matter.

In January Reid intervened on behalf of 18-year-old Emma Sarkisian and her 17-year-old sister, Mariam, who spent two weeks in federal custody awaiting deportation to Armenia. Their father, Rouben Sarkisian, came to the United States in 1991 and married an American woman, with whom he had three more daughters. After his divorce Sarkisian became a U.S. resident, one step below citizenship. He said he thought his older daughters had been granted the same status.

Petrachenkova said she and her husband, Vladimir Khatin, first attracted the attention of authorities in their small village outside of Moscow when they began traveling abroad with ice shows. The police made frequent visits to their home and to the home of Petrachenkova's mother, demanding money, she said. There were several occasions when the officers forced their way into the home, one time kicking in the front door and brandishing handguns, she said.

While the family was in Long Island in 2000, touring with "Moscow Stars on Ice," the demands increased, Petrachenkova said.

Petrachenkova said she called her mother discuss the family's itinerary for their trip back to Russia after the ice show contract was finished. Her mother told her the police had come to her apartment and warned her that the family had better be bringing cash payments with them "or else," Petrachenkova said.

"They said we must pay them bribes or they will kill our son and put us in jail," said Petrachenkova, 35. "How can we go back after that?"

The threats from gangsters and local police in their Russian hometown have continued over the past four years, Petrachenkova said. Every few months someone gets in touch with her mother and renews the demand for money or asks when the family will return, she said. Petrachenkova said she has written numerous letters to Russian authorities at the regional and state level asking for help.

"They tell me it is a local matter and that I am jumping too high (in the chain of command)," Petrachenkova said.

The family had made no plans for an extended stay when they arrived in the United States in late fall of 2000, she said.

"We brought none of our possessions," Petrachenkova said. "Our skates and our costumes, that's all we had."

Petrachenkova and Khatin were given permission to look for work while their case made its way through the legal system. Friends who had found work quickly in Las Vegas and encouraged them to head west. They both began coaching and Khatin also started a small car repair business. Timofey enrolled in Odyssey Charter School, a distance education program that allowed him to complete classes online.

"I get straight A's," said Timofey, who finished sixth in this year's Southwest Pacific Regional Championships. "No B's, no C's, not even an A-minus."

Timofey said he considers himself "mostly American" and wants to stay in the United States. He hopes to one day make the U.S. Olympic team and is working toward a berth at next winter's U.S. National Championships.

But Jeremiah Wolf Stuchiner, the Las Vegas attorney who represented the family's appeal of the deportation order, said without intervention by an elected official there's little hope of them remaining in the United States.

"Legally, they're finished," said Stuchiner, who also represented the Sarkisian family. "We lost with the Ninth Circuit (Court of Appeals) and that's as far as it goes."

Political asylum is typically reserved for members of religious sects or other recognized groups where there's a recognized pattern of persecution, Stuchiner said. Figure skaters being shaken down by local thugs didn't satisfy the court's threshold, Stuchiner said.

"You can't get political asylum to protect you from criminals," Stuchiner said.

The family may have had more success at the beginning of the process if they had tried to trade on their professional abilities as highly trained artists, Stuchiner said. But now it's too late to shift gears, he said.

Petrachenkova said while she is frightened, she hasn't given up hope.

"I want my son to grow up in a country that has laws that protect people, where people have rights," Petrachenkova said. "I pray that someone will help us to keep him safe."