Detained Washington state immigrant wants to leave the U.S. ICE is keeping him here

A Russian man held in Washington's Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center went on a hunger strike for the third time in March. His plea: Let him leave the U.S.

You would think that would be no problem for the Trump administration, which has stressed over and over again it wants to remove millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S.

But Yury Saaryan, who came to the U.S. nearly nine years ago on a tourist visa and overstayed, has been detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma ever since he went to a U.S. ICE office in August asking for help getting back to Russia, according to both Saaryan and ICE.

Saaryan is not the only person who under the Trump administration has languished in detention despite being ready to leave the U.S. Removing immigrants, it turns out, can be complicated.

The administration has moved with lightning speed on some cases. Witness a California woman whom a court ruled was wrongly deported to Mexico within a day of being detained in February. But the administration's push to arrest and detain large numbers of people seems to be straining its capacity to manage all of its cases.

In November, an immigration judge granted Saaryan's request for voluntary departure, which allows people to leave the country without a removal order on their record that may bar them from returning to the U.S. for up to 10 years. Still, ICE did not arrange for him to leave.

An ICE officer assigned to Saaryan's case told the Russian immigrant's lawyer, Hilary Smith, that for 40 days he had been on special assignment in Minneapolis, the site of a massive monthslong surge of federal agents ending in February. The officer added that the entire time he was gone none of his cases got touched," Smith recalled.

Someone granted voluntary departure used to leave the U.S. within weeks, said Elizabeth Benki, a directing attorney for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Recently, she said, "we've seen people waiting several months."

Immigration attorney Adam Boyd said one client who had been issued a supposedly fast-track "expedited removal" order waited in detention at the Tacoma facility for more than a year to be deported. Although the client had initially sought asylum in the U.S., he was ultimately resigned to leaving the U.S. and frustrated by the long wait in detention, Boyd said.

British tourist Rebecca Burke was actually leaving the U.S. and trying to enter Canada last spring when she was turned around because of incorrect visa paperwork and sent by U.S. authorities to the Tacoma detention center. She was kept there for nearly three weeks.

Immigrant detention centers such as the Northwest ICE Processing Center resemble jails, though many held in them have never been convicted of crimes. Complaints about conditions at the roughly 1,600-bed Tacoma facility, as elsewhere, are legion. Human rights groups, local government agencies and people who have been detained have cited foul-tasting drinking water, irregularly delivered food sometimes served raw, inadequate medical care and erratic access to the outdoors.

Confinement there is "a little easier to wrap your mind around ... when you have an end date," Boyd said. "But when you have no idea, it's difficult."

It's particularly devastating to people who have decided not to fight their case precisely because they want to get out of detention and end up stuck there anyway, Benki said.

To Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who last served under the Biden administration, the delays illustrate one reason "why this massive expansion of detention doesn't necessarily make sense."

The number of detained immigrants nationwide hit a record high of more than 70,000 in January. And the administration plans to spend billions of dollars on increasing detention space, in part through buying warehouses across the county to be used for that purpose.

Yet, Trickler-McNulty pointed out, detaining people is just one step in the process.

ICE often has to arrange travel documents from destination countries. Many people don’t have a valid passport, so they need a document verifying their identity and right to enter a country. That might not be straightforward because some countries only accept a limited number of people deported by the U.S., Trickler-McNulty noted.

The administration also needs planes to take people away, she said. While sometimes using commercial flights, it relies to a great extent on a limited number of charter company planes, using 35 for removals in January and February, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a project of the national nonprofit Human Rights First. That includes 21 planes also used to shuttle people between detention centers and deportation staging facilities around the U.S.

Deportation flights go frequently to some countries, such as Guatemala and Honduras, while such flights are rare to other countries, including Russia, noted Savi Arvey of Human Rights First.

Much of the logistical challenge falls on ICE "deportation officers" whose workload likely increased as the detained population ballooned. And they may be called away to other duties the administration views as more of a priority, as in Saaryan's case.

In some cases, people may be considered stateless because, for instance, they were born in a country that no longer exists, like the U.S.S.R., or that has split in two, like Sudan, according to Boyd, the immigration attorney. ICE may have released them from detention years ago because it had no country to send them to. Under Trump's mandate to get arrest numbers up, the agency has nonetheless been rearresting some at required ICE check-ins.

"ICE will detain them without really showing that they have the ability to deport that person, and so then they sit in detention for a really long time," Boyd said.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to general questions about delays for this story. In a previous statement, an ICE spokesperson said the agency "is committed to safe and orderly removals" but acknowledged "delays may occur because travel documents must be issued by foreign governments, which can take time and require additional verification. Removal logistics, such as flight scheduling and compliance with regulations, can also impact timing."

The administration in January said it had deported more than 675,000 people, a high number that nevertheless falls short of the Biden administration's record in its final year and Trump's goal of deporting a million people a year, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Saaryan, talking by phone from the detention center through an interpreter, said he made up his mind to leave the U.S. last year. Living in the Seattle area for years and working most recently for a moving company, he had enjoyed much about this country, including what he described as Americans' kindness and openness.

But he said he felt something shift after the last presidential election and missed his family in Russia, including his 12-year-old daughter. He had hoped to bring her to the U.S. after he settled here but that proved impossible, Saaryan said.

It was a "very hard period for me," he said.

Saaryan faced an obstacle to returning home quickly: His passport had expired. He decided to try and explain the problem to ICE agents at their regional headquarters in Tukwila. He said he thought they could smooth the way.

When he went to the ICE office in late August, he was detained.

Three months later on Nov. 25, it seemed he might be heading to Russia soon when a judge granted him voluntary departure. But he still needed a travel document, which ICE usually arranges for someone in detention.

He received no updates as time went by and grew increasingly concerned. The judge had given Saaryan until March 25 to take advantage of voluntary departure. After that, he could be subject to a removal order.

A friend tried to help by contacting the Russian Embassy in December and again in February. The friend was told both times the embassy could issue a travel document in approximately two days if Saaryan went there in person, according to a sworn declaration.

Asked about Saaryan's case, the Department of Homeland Security initially said — without providing details — it would be dangerous to let Saaryan "roam free" because "his criminal history includes lewd and lascivious acts involving a child."

In fact, a report from the Garfield County sheriff's office shows Saaryan was arrested in Utah in 2021 but no child was directly involved. He peed at the side of a grocery store on a November night, according to the report. Working as a truck driver then, Saaryan said, he couldn’t find a restroom to use. It was dark, he said, and he didn't see anyone around. But the report said families were walking in and out of the store.

He was charged with "lewdness involving a child," a misdemeanor, but ultimately convicted of disorderly conduct, according to court records. He paid a $150 fine. Pressed for details, an ICE spokesperson confirmed the arrest it had referred to happened in Utah and said it concerned "lewdness involving a child plus disorderly conduct," this time omitting the word "lascivious."

Smith, Saaryan's lawyer, said an ICE officer made no mention of the charge when approached in mid-March at the Tacoma detention center. The lawyer asked if there is any way her client could be released to go to the embassy. "He's willing to be under supervision, on an ankle monitor, whatever you see fit," she told him.

"That's not something we can do for people in our custody," the officer said, according to Smith.

The officer also told her ICE first requested a travel document for Saaryan in February — three months after the judge's voluntary departure order — and hadn't heard anything back yet. In his experience, Russian travel documents take a while, he added. He promised ICE would extend Saaryan's voluntary departure deadline, which is within the agency's authority.

Meanwhile, Saaryan resorted to hunger-striking. He lasted a week, about the same length as two previous hunger strikes this year. He said he ended it March 20 because his blood pressure had plummeted and he felt like he could die.

But nothing had changed: He still felt like he had no answers about when he might be allowed to leave and helpless to do anything about it.

ICE said Wednesday it is still trying to get a travel document for Saaryan and hopes to carry out his removal "soon.

© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.