Thread: Quicker Deportation

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ne ... 678552.htm

Posted on Mon, Feb. 12, 2007
IMMIGRATION
Policy shift may speed up deportationsImmigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala have complained that the U.S. government may be targeting them for deportation -- despite a lingering Cold War legacy of problems in their countries.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
Advocacy Center dinner
Herman Martinez fled when right-wing death squads targeted him and many other leftists in El Salvador.

He sneaked into the United States in August 1980, and remained undetected until immigration agents detained him at a Homestead tomato farm in May 1985 and placed him in deportation proceedings. Martinez asked for asylum, but immigration authorities did not believe his story and pressured him to voluntarily return home.

''I refused,'' said Martinez, who eventually stayed under a 1986 U.S. amnesty law. ``Had I been sent back, they would have killed me right at the airport, on arrival.''

Now a South Florida immigrant rights activist for the Quaker human rights organization American Friends Service Committee, Martinez, 47, was among tens of thousands of Salvadorans who in the 1980s were discouraged from seeking asylum. That practice ended in 1988 when a Los Angeles federal judge issued an injunction ordering immigration authorities to advise Salvadoran immigrants about their right to seek asylum.

The Orantes Injunction is now under official attack. The Department of Homeland Security is pressing a federal court in Los Angeles to lift it -- and for Congress to prohibit similar future injunctions.

The fight is among new strategic moves by Homeland Security to quicken the deportation of undocumented Central American immigrants and gain control of a porous border.

Another is the end last year of the ''catch-and-release'' practice under which undocumented Central American immigrants were released by immigration courts after Border Patrol officers caught them sneaking into the United States along the Mexican border.

Also, activists who represent Guatemalan immigrants say asylum officers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have begun to systematically deny thousands of asylum claims from Guatemalans who fled in the 1990s, arguing that normalcy has returned to Guatemala since the 1996 peace accords.

MORE FEARFUL

Meanwhile, other immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua are growing increasingly fearful about possible deportation if the Bush administration does not renew their temporary work and residence permits -- which expire later this year.

More than half a million Central American immigrants could face deportation proceedings if temporary protected status ends, the Orantes Injunction is lifted and most Guatemalan asylum claims fail. Between 50,000 and 100,000 of those immigrants live in South Florida, according to immigrant-rights activists.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is expected to rule soon on the government's motion to end the injunction.

Any foreign national can seek asylum, but only Salvadorans in deportation proceedings are specifically advised about the asylum option. Undocumented Cuban migrants who reach U.S. soil generally get to stay under the ''wet foot/dry foot'' policy.

Linton Joaquin, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said attorneys for the U.S. government argued in court last month that the Orantes Injunction no longer applies because the civil war ended in El Salvador.

Joaquin was among lawyers who helped bring about the Orantes Injunction in 1988 and is now part of the legal team seeking to convince U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow not to lift the injunction.

It was named after Crosby Wilfredo Orantes-Hernandez, a Salvadoran detained by immigration officers in Culver City, Calif., in 1981. Like Martinez, Orantes was also pressured to accept voluntary departure -- but refused.

A FEDERAL PRIORITY

Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security secretary, has said ending Orantes is a priority because it prevents immigration officers from quickly deporting undocumented Salvadorans.

Salvadorans account for the ''largest number of apprehended illegal migrants, with the exception of Mexicans,'' according to an Aug. 23 Homeland Security fact sheet.

Meanwhile, concern about Guatemalans arose after an immigrant rights group in Los Angeles -- Casa de la Cultura de Guatemala -- recently found that USCIS asylum officers had begun denying asylum claims of many Guatemalans who arrived in the 1990s.

Byron Vasquez, president of the group, said his organization is preparing a lawsuit in federal court to halt asylum officers from denying these claims, arguing they should have been decided earlier.

Immigration officials said the agency is not seeking to deny all petitions from Guatemalan asylum-seekers and they are being decided on a case-by-case basis. Denials are referred to immigration judges to reverse or affirm.

But officials acknowledged the agency delayed decisions on many Guatemalan asylum applications because at the time the number of green cards available to asylum seekers was limited.

Those whose cases were delayed, officials said, were told they could seek green cards under other options such as marriage to U.S. citizens or a program that awarded residence to certain Guatemalans who entered the country prior to certain dates in 1990 and 1991. But many did not qualify.

According to Vasquez, as many as 250,000 Guatemalans could face removal proceedings. Immigration officials said the figure may be much lower than that.

PEACE ACCORDS

Vasquez said many applications may be denied because asylum officers or immigration courts will hear U.S. officials' arguments about changed conditions in the Central American country following 1996 peace accords.

Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center prevented Erlinda Alvarez Mendoza's deportation and won asylum for three of her four children. One remained in Guatemala, but Alvarez Mendonza said she was trying to bring her here. Alvarez Mendoza cleans homes and businesses for a living.

Alvarez Mendoza's' cousin, Otoniel de la Roca Mendoza, was a key witness in a famous case involving Guatemalan guerrilla leader Efraín Bámaca, captured by Guatemalan soldiers in 1992. He was later believed to have been tortured and killed while in military custody. His widow is Harvard-educated attorney Jennifer Harbury.

So we are supposed to go on continuing to pay the price for the world's corruption?

US taxpayers pay for the results of corrupt societies everywhere.

If these people need asylum, there are other countries to go to. Well, wait a second. I guess not. Many of those countries actually TRY to enforce their immigration laws.

So they can say, "I refuse" and that's all it takes?

Arrogant! Arrogant!

Many of these people came into the country with premission of the federal govenment due to the problems in their countries. It was not suppose to be forever but only until their countries settled down. The federal government doesn't want to realize that the only way that the countries are going to settle is by having these people upset their government. Giving them a blessing to come to the US doesn't solve any problems and only puts more of a burden on the US taxpayers. We are now going to do the same thing with IRAQ. The federal government doesn't learn from past mistakes, they just keep making the same mistakes over and over.