U.S. entry denial was 'nightmare' for parents

News - MSNBC.com: "The Indian couple flew for more than 20 hours to see their children and grandchildren in Orange County, arriving Sunday night - Mother's Day.The visit lasted 45 minutes.

Then they were gone - escorted after a brief reunion with their shocked relatives in a departure lounge at Los Angeles International Airport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to a plane bound for India, 24 hours after their arrival in the U.S.

The cause: a dispute over paperwork. The effect?

"I cried and cried and cried," said Rajeswari Ratnam, 68, reached from an airport phone Tuesday in Delhi, of the detention she and her husband, N.S. Venkatratnam, 75, experienced earlier this week. "I begged them: 'I want to talk to my children at least.'"

Instead, she and her husband were kept in a locked room for 24 hours, where they said they slept on the floor and were accompanied to the bathroom by guards. Eventually able to speak to their children by telephone, they did not see them until minutes before leaving the country.

The couple's paperwork seemed in order. Both carry valid visas necessary to enter the United States - in their case 10-year, multiple-entry visas that expire in 2010.

At question instead were the computerized dates of the couple's past visit to the U.S. five years ago.

CBP Port Director Ana Hinojosa on Wednesday said officials were doing their job by returning the couple after immigration computer systems failed to find evidence of a visa extension allowing the earlier visit in April 2000 to be prolonged by six months.

Around 9 p.m., Harish's brother Suresh, a program manager for Cisco Systems in San Jose, got a call. It was CBP requesting proof of his parents' previous visit to the United States in 2000.

The computer couldn't find evidence of the visa extension. The family, CBP said, had 24 hours to prove it existed.

On the CBP Web site, foreign visitors are instructed to retain a returned portion of a white "I-94" card stamped with any extension dates as proof that they obeyed immigration laws. But few understand they have to keep past proof in order to make future trips, Irvine immigration lawyer Angelo Paparelli said.

Suresh searched his records to find the cashed check used to pay for the visa extension. But it was lodged in the records hall of the Bank of America on microfiche film.

It took until noon Monday to get a copy faxed. But there was a problem. The check's resolution, after being copied from microfiche and faxed, was poor - CBP officials couldn't read it, the Venkats said. It was also not proof the extension was approved, Hinojosa said.

With hours to deadline, Suresh tried another approach- his 2000 IRS records, when he took a tax deduction for the year his dependent parents lived with him.

The IRS paperwork showed his parents' "I-94" visa numbers. But when CBP ran them, the extension did not appear.

In Delhi on Tuesday, Ratnam said she was still not sure what paperwork she signed during her detention.

"There were so many forms," Ratnam said. "They wanted us to sign everything. Because I wanted to play with my grandchildren, that was the only thing I saw. So, I signed everything."

The couple eventually discovered that they had signed a "withdrawal of admission" - a legal form that allows for both their removal and the cancellation of their current, multi-year visa.

Hinojosa said the elderly couple did not qualify for a "deferred inspection" - a grace period of a week or more in which the couple could stay until their documents were verified.

Hirash Venkat has since learned that for a fee he can get a copy of the missing extension request - from the Immigration Service itself.

"Isn't that the most amazing and depressing thing?" he said. "If we had only had more time. But we were not given the opportunity."

Ratnam said she and her husband will not return to the United States.

"It's such a great country, such a developed country," she said. "It's shocking we've been treated so badly."