http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5499754.html

Minnesotans for 15 years, they face deportation
Randy Furst
Star Tribune
Published July 11, 2005

Andrew and Blanka Danecek, Czech natives, have lived in Minnesota for 15 years. They have a 9-year-old daughter who was born in the Twin Cities, they own a house in Maple Grove and they both have good jobs.

He's 55 years old and a child-support officer with Hennepin County; she's 52 and works for TCF Bank.

Even though the family has built a life here, immigration courts have made repeated rulings ordering their deportation because their son's leukemia is in remission. They gained special entry in 1990 for his treatment. On Wednesday, they will leave the United States for the Czech Republic where they have not lived since the 1980s.

"I'm so scared," said Blanka Danecek. "I don't know what to do."

Immigration officials say they have a mandate to have the Daneceks removed.

"If an immigration judge orders them deported, and the Appeals Court orders them deported, we do not use the previous discretion that Congress gave us to overturn the judge's decision," said Tim Counts, Twin Cities spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Daneceks' plight is not unusual, immigration experts say. A tougher immigration law, passed in 1996, has made it increasing difficult for judges to side with people like the Daneceks, they say.

Indeed, in ordering them deported, local immigration Judge Joseph Dierkes said that it was "an unpleasant case" but he was bound by legal precedents and statutes.

The Board of Immigration Appeals has twice upheld their deportation, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals said it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.

"These people built a home in Minnesota," said their attorney, Herbert Igbanugo. "They are gainfully employed. Why don't they leave them here?"

Friends and neighbors agree. A St. Louis Park woman has circulated a petition that has garnered 500 signatures opposing their deportation.

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's office said on Friday that it will try to expedite a process to get the couple readmitted to the United States once they are deported.

Fled oppression

Andrew Danecek knows what it is like to be at odds with the government.

As a youth in Czechoslovakia, he participated in a demonstration after the 1968 Soviet invasion of his country, was arrested by police, held for a number of hours and beaten. Later, he said, his home was burglarized because Czechoslovakian officials suspected he had dissident literature.

When Danecek and his wife fled to Austria in 1988, he was charged in absentia with leaving Czechoslovakia illegally and sentenced to 2½ years in prison. His son, Chris, was diagnosed as having leukemia, and the family was admitted to the United States in 1990 on what is called humanitarian parole.

Trained as a lawyer in Czechoslovakia, Andrew got his first job here in a local factory. Blanka went to work as a housekeeper at a hotel.

In 1995, their oldest son, Andrew, a high school soccer star, was killed in an accidental fall from a bridge. A daughter, Blanche, was born in 1996.

In 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Daneceks went to the immigration office in Bloomington to renew their annual work permits.

Immigration authorities said that the Daneceks' humanitarian parole was being withdrawn because their son's leukemia was in remission.

The couple said that when an immigration clerk at the window demanded that they hand over the papers that said they had a legal right to be in the country, they objected, and were ushered in to see an immigration supervisor. "He told us we were done and he was going to do anything possible to get us out [of the country]," Blanka said.

Counts, the immigration spokesman, said that the official the Daneceks mention no longer works for them and he couldn't verify what happened.

At removal proceedings in February 2002, Judge Dierkes noted that the Daneceks' son, Chris, was now older than 21 and no longer had a serious health issue.

As for their daughter, Blanche, "This court hears many cases involving children who are required to leave their country," he said. The couple has relatives in the Czech Republic, their son's leukemia was in remission for at least 10 years, and they no longer need to fear a repressive government, Dierkes said.

The couple offers a different take on their prospects.

"We will lose our jobs," Blanka said. "We will have to start over again. It's impossible."

Their daughter doesn't understand what is happening, Blanka said, has grown depressed and is seeing a psychologist.

Married to a U.S. citizen, and living and working in Boston, Chris, 26, is seeking to become a U.S. citizen and had an interview scheduled in June with immigration authorities, who inexplicably canceled it. There was hope that quick approval of his citizenship could make it possible for him to get permanent residency for his parents.

"It is an unnerving and ridiculous situation," Chris Danecek said. "I just try to tell [his parents] to focus on the positive and we will win in the end."

Carol Just, a friend from St. Louis Park, who has organized a petition supporting the Daneceks, said the Danecek family reminds her of her great-grandparents, who came to this country in the 1880s.

"As an American, a taxpayer, as a human being. I am so angry," she said. "These people came here, worked hard, they embody the American dream."

Lory Rosenberg, of Rockville, Md., a former member of the Board of Immigration Appeals, said last week that while the Danecek's case is a sad one, it is representative of thousands of cases.

She said that as a result of the 1996 law passed by Congress, discretion was taken out of the hands of immigration judges and the appeals board. Previously, the law said that in order to stay in the country, an immigrant had to show it would be an extreme hardship on themselves if they had to leave.

The new law says the hardship must be suffered by a U.S. citizen or a permanent lawful citizen relative, not the person who faces deportation, she said. Also, "the degree of hardship increased from extreme hardship to extremely and exceptionally unusual hardship." In the Danacek's case, Judge Dierkes said in his decision that they did not reach that level of hardship.

Rosenberg said such a law goes against common sense. Referring to the Daneceks, she said, "These are the type of people we want to keep."

Joe Vail, a professor of immigration at the University of Houston Law Center and an immigration judge from 1995 to 1999, said he resigned as a judge because the law change required people who had worked hard, paid taxes and built lives in this country to leave. "It really did mandate for me to deport good people." he said.

Loan Huynh, an attorney and chapter chair of the Minnesota/Dakotas American Immigration Lawyers Association, said a "tragic consequence" of the law is that it will force the Daneceks' daughter to move to a country she's never lived in before.

Senator offers help

The Daneceks have stayed in the United States, hoping for some last minute help that could turn their case around. Had they returned to the Czech Republic, however, during a period of voluntary departure, they could have reentered the United States more quickly, said Erich Mische, Sen. Coleman's chief of staff.

Once they arrive in the Czech Republic, Coleman's office will work with the U.S. Embassy in Prague to waive a requirement that they not be readmitted to the United States for five years.

Immigration officials have been fair, Mische said, and "it would be harmful to suggest that immigration is at fault here."

Mische added, "This isn't an indictment of who they [the Daneceks] are as people. There is no suggestion that they are nothing but law-abiding citizens."