Deportation to Nowhere

"Freedom," he said, holding a plastic bag of his belongings. "I just can't stop smiling."

In October, immigration authorities released Vanian -- a convicted felon who served a sentence for carrying a loaded firearm -- because they could not get a valid passport to deport him.

Vanian is ethnic Armenian, but Armenia has no record of his citizenship. The only passport he holds is an expired one from the former Soviet Union, to which that country had belonged.

"He is a native of the USSR, and there is no such thing as the USSR," said his attorney, Victoria Bezman. "He is stateless. What options does he have?"

For now, he can work legally in the United States.

Vanian is one of thousands of immigrants across the country who have served time for crimes and subsequently been ordered deported but are still here because the United States cannot get passports or visas for them.

Some are from countries such as Cuba that do not have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Others are from African countries where international borders have shifted or where political turmoil has made it impossible to locate records.

Still others, including many Palestinians, were born in refugee camps and do not belong to any country.

Immigration authorities are bound by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibits keeping detainees for more than six months beyond their prison sentences if deportation is unlikely. In some cases, the government finds a third country to accept the immigrants, but more end up back on U.S. streets.

Immigrants are subject to deportation if they are in the country illegally or are green-card holders convicted of serious crimes.

Just in the Los Angeles area, about 2,000 immigrants have been ordered deported but have been released under certain conditions, such as reporting their whereabouts regularly.

Of those, roughly 50% to 60% were released because no travel documents could be obtained from their country of origin, according to officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"People think that once somebody is ordered deported, it's bon voyage," said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. "It's not that simple."

The threshold to keep these immigrants in custody is extremely high, she said -- for instance, national security or terrorism concerns.