A Dallas dad came to terms with his imminent deportation. Then an 11th-hour court order gave hope to see his family again
By Danya Gainor, CNN
(CNN) — On Saturday evening, Samantha Surovtsev squinted at her phone, blinking through tears as she rushed to order a set of Eastern European power adapters. Despite the 80-degree North Texas heat, she then drove to Old Navy and bought two bulky winter coats.
When the adapters arrived Sunday, she tucked them into a suitcase alongside the coats and wool socks and drove everything to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado.
Her husband, Roman Surovtsev, was inside. The 41-year-old had been there for 109 days, after being unexpectedly detained during a routine check-in with ICE in August. Surovtsev had been convicted of armed carjacking when he was 19 and was released from prison in 2014 before a six-month stint in ICE custody. The run-in cost him his permanent resident status.
Surovtsev was swept up again in ICE detainment as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, an effort stretching across the country from Charlotte to Portland, fracturing families and communities.
Since returning to office, Trump has implemented policies to deport undocumented migrants en masse. ICE agents have been directed to detain and arrest people at work, courthouses, churches and schools as part of the administration’s deportation push.
Now the husband and father of two was a day away from boarding a deportation flight with dozens of other detainees to war-torn Ukraine, a country he hadn’t lived in since it was part of the Soviet Union.
CNN has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on Surovtsev’s case. In a Monday post on X, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called Surovtsev a “criminal illegal alien” with “a history of violence,” citing carjacking and burglary charges alongside a number of other offenses of which he hasn’t been convicted.
On Sunday night, he used the center’s tablet to call his wife, family and in-laws to say what he believed were his final goodbyes. Immigration officials wouldn’t tell Surovtsev, his attorneys or Samantha when or where specifically he was being removed, citing security concerns, his wife said.
All they could do now was wait.
Monday passed in agonizing quiet. Samantha sat by the phone for hours, waiting for confirmation that the worst had happened, that Surovtsev had been officially deported.
His immigration attorney finally called at 3:29 p.m. She stepped outside, away from the sounds of her young daughters playing inside.
“The stay has been granted,” the attorney told her. The flight full of detainees would still leave for Ukraine, but he wouldn’t be on it.
‘God’s timing is perfect’
Roman Surovtsev was born in the former Soviet Union in 1984 and fled to the US legally with his mother and two siblings when he was 4 years old. Although they found relief from Soviet rule in their new country, he grew up in poverty and instability.
In 2003, at 19 years old, Surovtsev began serving a 13-year sentence after helping some friends commit an armed carjacking of a motorcycle in California. In prison, he was baptized, a turning point that transformed him, his wife said.
He met Samantha in 2017 while jet skiing with mutual friends in Orange County, and the two eventually married, bought a home outside Dallas, launched a painting business and started a family. Surovtsev has never violated the terms of his supervision order, his lawyers wrote in court filings.
When Samantha hung up with the attorney on Monday, her heart racing, she rang the tablet at the detention center.
“Are you listening?” she asked Surovtsev when he picked up. “They issued the stay, and they’re reopening your case.”
His lawyers thought it would take two to three months to hear from a judge about the motion to reopen his case, which they filed November 4.
Surovtsev wept. “God’s timing is perfect,” he told her.
“We had accepted that Roman would be on that plane, and I was thinking about what our lives are going to look like and if we could ever get to him again,” Samantha said. “And suddenly, it’s all reversed, because there’s still hope.”
She spent the rest of the day telling family and friends the news.
That night, as Samantha tucked their daughters into bed, her 5-year-old asked if they could call dad. For months, Samantha had told the girls that their father was simply “at work.”
When he picked up the tablet, the two talked excitedly about all the things they planned to do when Surovtsev came home. He promised her he would build a massive Barbie dollhouse to go into the attic playroom he made for his girls.
His daughter squealed with excitement.
Decades of legal battles, time served and reform led to the stay
Surovtsev was released early on good behavior in 2014 when an immigration court judge ordered him to be deported. He lost his green card, and he was placed into ICE custody, but the agency ran into trouble removing him from the country.
Having been born in the former Soviet Union, the Russian Consulate told the US government in early 2015 it had no records of Surovtsev, his lawyers wrote in court filings. The Ukrainian government also said at the time it couldn’t confirm his citizenship given that Surovtsev was from a region of Ukraine that’s at war and not readily reachable, and therefore could not issue him Ukrainian travel documents.
Subsequently, Surovtsev was released from ICE custody in May 2015 on an order of supervision without his green card but with an employment authorization document, a work permit, and was required to wear an ankle monitor for six months. He checked in with ICE every other week before his visits became quarterly, then annual.
For years, he checked in at the kiosk of the Dallas ICE office, confirming details like his address and any travel plans in between starting his own business and building a family.
His unexpected detainment during a routine check-in on August 1 mobilized Samantha, who rallied a team of lawyers to represent him.
His counsel was able to successfully vacate Surovtsev’s carjacking charge, essentially wiping it from his record, on the grounds that he received ineffective counsel back in 2014, Surovtsev’s immigration lawyer Jennifer Rozdzielski said. This empowered his attorneys to file a motion earlier this month to reopen his old criminal case in hopes of getting it dismissed.
In the 11th hour on Monday, just before he was to board the deportation flight bound for Ukraine, a court in California agreed to hear his case and ordered a stay of his removal, barring the US government from deporting him.
“Respondent has demonstrated new, material evidence to warrant reopening of these proceedings,” the order, reviewed by CNN, reads. “His convictions were vacated pursuant to California Penal Code 1473.7(a)(1), specifically due to constitutional defects in the underlying criminal proceedings, so Respondent met his ‘heavy burden’ to show that his evidence ‘would likely change the result’ in his case.”
Surovtsev will remain in detention while the court proceedings play out.
“We’re just thankful that plane took off without him, and that the judge ruled the way she did, because all we wanted was time for our case to be heard. And we got it,” Samantha said.
But Surovtsev’s team has acknowledged that the fight isn’t over.
“What’s next is making sure that not a single other Ukrainian who’s in detention is sent back to that country,” said Eric Lee, one of Surovtsev’s attorneys.
The flight carrying dozens of detainees still took off for Ukraine, attorneys said
Surovtsev’s relief while his court proceedings play out comes at a bittersweet moment for his legal team and other families. Some deportees boarded Monday’s flight and are now in Ukraine, his attorneys said.
“However many people were ultimately successfully deported to Ukraine are probably fighting for their lives right now,” said Lee. “We’re glad at least one person was prevented from going on that flight, but we’re very upset about all the others and very, very sorry for their families.”
Samantha has been in contact with several other families with loved ones who were deported on Monday’s flight. None of them have been able to get ahold of them yet, she said.
CNN has reached out to DHS for comment on the flight to Ukraine.
One family is tracking their deportee’s phone, with an app showing it on the move inside Ukraine, Samantha said. But he’s not answering their calls, and they’re not sure if he still has his phone.
Another detainee has a background similar to Surovtsev – a USSR child refugee who got into trouble as a teenager, served his sentence and moved through adulthood with a supervision order from ICE, his attorney Ann Peters said. Her client, who also narrowly missed being deported Monday, is the primary caretaker of his brother, a paralyzed Marine Corps veteran.
As Samantha and other detainees’ families sit in legal limbo during what feels like an endless pursuit to see their loved ones again, Samantha said the Bible verse Romans 8:31 is keeping her warm.
“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
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