Wife of man who supplied guns used in San Bernardino terror attack faces deportation

Russian national Mariya Cheykh, the central figure in the marriage-fraud case involving the brother of one of the San Beardino terrorist attackers, is in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and facing deportation after being freed on bail in her federal case.

Cheykh, 26, of Ontario, was served with a notice to appear — officially known as a charging document — on Friday ICE spokeswoman Virginia C. Kice said. The U.S. Marshal’s Service transferred her to ICE custody Thursday after she posted $50,000 bail.

Cheykh is being held without bail at Adelanto Detention Facility, according to the ICE online inmate locator. ICE typically requests that a person be held without bail if authorities believe the detainee is a risk to fail to appear in court or poses a threat to public safety. Cheykh could request a bail hearing at which a judge would determine whether she remained in custody.

Assistant U.S. Attoey Jay Robinson, at her arraignment Thursday in U.S. District Court in Riverside, said the govement believes that Cheykh is a flight risk but not a danger to the public.

Even if she remained in custody, Cheykh would still be available for hearings in her marriage-fraud case, Kice said.

The criminal and immigration cases are separate, Kice said. Federal officials acknowledge that in the past detainees have been deported before their criminal cases conclude. Kice said ICE officials and federal authorities will be in discussions as both cases progress.

Potentially complicating the immigration case is that, according to Cheykh’s attoey, at some time since arriving in the U.S. she applied for asylum. That application could be used to prevent Cheykh from being deported.

Cheykh entered the country in July 2009 as an exchange visitor and failed to depart by Oct. 30 of that year as required by her three-month visa, Kice said, citing the Department of Homeland Security database.

Federal rules require asylum applications to be filed within a year of arriving in the United States, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website. Claire K. Nicholson, a spokeswoman for that agency, said she could not comment on individual applications because of privacy rules.

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Nicholson said that it is possible that it could take six years for an asylum application to be ruled on.

Cheykh is married to Enrique Marquez Jr., 24, of Riverside, who is accused of supplying guns and explosives used in the San Beardino attack. Marquez has been charged with conspiring to support terrorists, lying about the firearm purchase and participating in a “sham marriage.”

An indictment alleges that Syed Raheel Farook and Tatiana Farook took part in the sham by witnessing the Marquez-Cheykh wedding in November 2014, then helping maintain the “illusion” that the two were living as a married couple — up to the day before the Dec. 2 shooting at the Inland Regional Center that killed 14 people and wounded 22 others.

Court documents say Marquez admitted he was paid $200 a month to marry Cheykh.

Cheykh was actually living with a man in Ontario, and they have a 3-year-old child.

The Farooks and Cheykh pleaded not guilty to all charges Thursday. None of them have been implicated in the shooting plot.

Raheel Farook’s brother, Syed Rizwan Farook, and Rizwan Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, gued down Rizwan Farook’s co-workers in the San Beardino County Division of Environment Health during a training session in a conference room at the IRC. The couple were killed in a shootout with police hours after the attack.

Raheel silent

Raheel and Tatiana Farook posted bail Thursday and walked out of the courthouse. Friday, Raheel was at their Forum Way home in Corona. As he collected his mail from the coer mailbox, he shook his head from side to side when asked if he’d like to tell his side of the case.

Neighbor Ruben Duran, 33, said he hadn’t had an opinion on whether Raheel Farook might have been involved in the Dec. 2 plot, so he said it was only a small measure of comfort that the govement said Thursday that Farook was not a danger to the public.

“If we were all held responsible for what our family members did, we’d all be in trouble,” Duran said.

Other neighbors declined to comment or attach their names to their Idea Friday. Generally, they didn’t seem conceed about Farook’s potential involvement in the terrorist attack and were happy for the buzz to die down in their neighborhood.