Immigrant Fights Battle To Survive Tough Times After Her American Husband Murdered, U.S. Tries To Deport Her To South Korea

Things have gotten worse instead of better for Jasmin Salehi.

Alone in a new apartment, half of her belongings still packed in moving boxes, Salehi, 32, surveys her new residence and wonders how it came to this.

When the Korean woman came to the United States more than a year ago, her life was filled with promise. A loving husband with a steady income, friends and a comfortable home in Sherman Oaks, Calif., were more than she could ask for.

Then life handed her more.

Her husband of 11 months, Cyrus Salehi, was killed earlier this year. Soon after, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service notified Salehi she would be deported because she had not been married to a U.S. citizen long enough to get her green card.

And recently, she was evicted from the only home she has known since arriving in the United States because she couldn’t make the mortgage payments.

“All these things happened at one time,” Salehi said. “It is really hard for me, and I get depressed, … especially during the holidays.”

Now, Salehi can only dream of her husband, who was killed in February when two robbers shot him during a holdup at the Denny’s restaurant he owned in Reseda, Calif.

But Jasmin Salehi isn’t without friends.

Francine and Ralph Myers, who informally have adopted Salehi since her husband’s death, met her through a victim support group. They are parents of a son who was slain.

Francine Myers says Salehi is a survivor who stood up to the INS and has been allowed to stay in this country until the person accused of murdering her husband stands trial.

Meanwhile, she has not let her own grief stop her from helping others.

“Although she needs help, she unselfishly helps others,” Myers said, adding that Salehi has accompanied her to the trial of the person accused of murdering her son. “That says something about her.”

Shellie Samuels, the deputy district attorney handling the Cyrus Salehi murder case, said that although all victims of crime are traumatized by a loved one’s death, Salehi’s ordeal has been especially nightmarish.

“Besides the emotional trauma she has gone through, the United States has not done right by her,” Samuels said. “Her American citizen husband gets killed and they treat her like an illegal immigrant.”

Cyrus and Jasmin Salehi filed the paperwork for Jasmin Salehi to receive a green card in early 1995, soon after their March nuptials.

But she eventually was deemed ineligible for residence status because her husband was killed before they had been married two years - an INS time requirement for a spouse sponsorship.

The INS has offered Salehi only a temporary reprieve, allowing her to stay in this country for her husband’s murder trial.

As for Salehi, she fears if she is sent back to South Korea, she will be a stranger in her own country, a place where stigmas are attached to orphans and widows, of which she is both.

“She has run into a lot of roadblocks, but she is a survivor,” said Francine Myers. “She will do all right as long as she feels like she has the support behind her.”