But the directive was blocked when immigration judges found that the brothers could face torture in Iran. U.S. officials have yet to find a third country to accept them, so they were freed from a detention facility in March but placed under an "order of supervision," which requires them to be tracked.
Deportations are pending against some people born to Lao or Vietnamese parents in Thai refugee camps. "Those ... are some of the people we have trouble removing because they're stateless," said deportation officer Gabriel Valdez.
Valdez recalled a case in which the person was born in what is now the Czech Republic, but he was of Slovakian descent. Each country contended that he was a citizen of the other, so he could not be deported and was released under an order of supervision.
But among the most common cases, Valdez said, are those of immigrants born in the republics of the former USSR.
"Anything with the breakup of the Soviet Union is really difficult to return," he added. "Many of those countries will not claim those people as citizens or nationals of whatever the new sovereign nation is."
That's essentially what has happened in Vanian's case.
He was born in 1978 in the former Soviet Union. When he was still a child, Vanian and his Armenian family fled the Azerbaijani capital of Baku during violent conflict between the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
They went to Russia but could not get residency, and then to Soviet Georgia, where Vanian's father had been born.
After obtaining Soviet passports and U.S. visas, the family came to the U.S. in 1995, Vanian and his attorney said. They applied for asylum the next year but were denied, according to the attorney. Two years later, they reapplied under false names and were mistakenly granted asylum, she said.
In 2003, Vanian was convicted of carrying a loaded firearm with intent to commit a felony. After serving time in state prison, he was transferred to immigration custody in January 2004 and ordered deported.
Deportation officers began trying to get travel documents to put him on a plane. But the Armenian Consulate and the Armenian Embassy both sent letters to immigration officials saying there was no record of Vanian's citizenship.
"He was not removable, so there was no sense in maintaining him in custody," deportation officer Valdez said.
