Steph Solis | Asbury Park Press

Erik Larsen

A New Brunswick man brought to the United States at age 2 by his parents, who were fleeing communism in Bulgaria, was deported to the Eastern European country Thursday night, his parents said.

Eni Entchev, 27, of New Brunswick, was pursuing his dream of auto mechanics at a North Brunswick dealership. He was engaged to his best friend, a U.S. citizen also of New Brunswick.

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Then on Nov. 15 he went to the Immigration and Customs office in Newark for his routine check-in, a condition of his recently secured stay of removal or temporary authorization in the country, said his father, Atanas Entchev.

He never walked out.

After weeks of lobbying for their son’s release, Atanas Entchev and his wife, Mayia, got a call from Eni asking them to pack him a bag. He explained he was being deported.

“This whole thing is just cruel, beyond, beyond comprehension,” said his father, who first arrived in the early 1990s on a J-1 student exchange visa. “We continued to struggle with immigration system, but if anybody is at fault — which I don’t think we are — but if anyone is at fault, I think it’s me. My son who is guilty of nothing gets harsh treatment.”

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Eni Entchev, who was born in Bulgaria, was brought to the U.S. at age 2 with his mother. His father had already arrived in the United States on the temporary visa. Atanas Entchev said he started to see a resurgence of communism in his native Bulgaria following the collapse of the Soviet Union and filed an asylum claim.

The family’s case wasn’t heard until a few years later. The circumstances in Bulgaria had changed, he said, but his family had already taken roots in the United States. The judge denied his application.

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Atanas Entchev tried to obtain legal status through his career. In 1997, the Immigration and Nationality Service (now U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) recognized him as an outstanding researcher in his field of computerized mapping.

“We had been struggling, I thought, for four years, now we’re out of the woods,” he said. “I was wrong. It turns out someone who came over as an exchange student on a J-1 visa, even though they’re outstanding, they have to leave.”

A lawyer encouraged him to apply for a waiver.

What followed were years of appeals and legal battles while Eni Entchev grew up without legal status. The family received that waiver last year, his father said.

Eni Entchev has no criminal record, his parents said. He has faced a couple of marijuana charges, but they were dismissed.

Eni Entchev, who obtained a GED and taken classes at Middlesex County College, wanted to get a degree but struggled with finances. Still, he pursued his passion for auto mechanics and worked for a dealership on Route 1. When he was detained, his father said, a manager submitted an affidavit to ICE as one of several people appealing on Eni Entchev’s behalf.

He and his fiancée, who have dated for four years, tried to get married in the Elizabeth Detention Center. But both are from New Brunswick and were required to get a marriage license from the local registrar so it could be legally recognized. The registrar declined to make the trip to Elizabeth, said the Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale, a former candidate for governor and pastor at the Reformed Church of Highland Park.

Kaper-Dale, a longtime immigrant advocate, was coordinating with New Brunswick officials as well as Highland Park’s to get a clerk to process the marriage license. Then came the news of Eni Entchev’s deportation.

“The fact that ICE would look to deport a DACA (eligible) youth with no criminal record before the six month period that the president indicated suggests that we’re dealing with an unfair broker,” Kaper-Dale said. “We need to know in the lead up to negotiations about a clean Dream Act that there’s a ceasefire, that there’s a reduction of escalation of deportation.”