Probe of INS’ Handling of Guatemalans Asked

About 40 immigrants rights groups Monday petitioned the Organization of American States to investigate the manner in which refugees from Guatemala are detained and processed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The petition charged that the INS is condemning many Guatemalan refugees to death by turning down virtually all applications for political asylum. And it claimed the agency’s detention centers are operating in violation of several internationally recognized human rights.

The petition is similar to a still-pending complaint filed a year and a half ago with OAS on behalf of Salvadoran refugees.

In both cases, critics of the INS policies say that the large mass of Central Americans who enter this country illegally should be classified as political refugees--fleeing oppressive and life-threatening conditions--and be permitted to stay.

They also complain that INS officials coerce many refugees into signing “voluntary departure” agreements and fail to inform them that they may file for political asylum.

‘Economic Refugees’

The INS regards most of the illegal immigrants as “economic refugees” who have come here seeking better living conditions, and are thus subject to deportation. The agency’s critics believe the U.S. government simply does not want to embarrass the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala by classifying its citizens as political refugees.

At a news conference in Los Angeles Monday, the petitioners said Guatemalan refugees in some cases have braved more hardships than Salvadorans to reach the U.S. because there is no network of refugee advocates in Guatemala and because many of the Guatemalan Indians speak no Spanish.

Their petition asks the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to conduct inspections of INS detention facilities, to find the United States “in violation of its obligation to grant political asylum to Guatemalans who qualify as political refugees” and to ask the U.S. to stop sending refugees back to Guatemala until the investigation is concluded.

“Deportation to a country enveloped in civil war is, for many, equivalent to death,” the petition said.

Three Guatemalans

The Los Angeles-based National Center For Immigrants’ Rights, which coordinated the petition, filed it on behalf of three Guatemalan refugees whose names were not released to protect their safety, according to Peter A. Schey, director of the immigrants rights center.

Schey said two of the three are being held in INS detention facilities while appealing for political asylum, and a third is living in Los Angeles, afraid to turn herself in and file a similar request because of the overwhelming odds she will be sent back to Guatemala.

About 50 Guatemalans are currently among the 486 immigrants being held at the INS’ El Centro Services Processing Center, a spokesman there said. There are 184 Salvadorans in the center.

Guatemalan refugees are fleeing a guerrilla war that has taken the lives of thousands of Indians and peasants. Human rights groups blame the country’s rightist government, charging that it has sent “death squads” to kill leftist guerrillas and other politically active persons. Abuses have increased since Gen. Mejia Victores seized power in 1983, these groups believe.

PBS Film

Schey said the petition was filed to coincide with Monday night’s Public Broadcasting System airing of “El Norte,” a 1984 film about a Guatemalan family that struggles to reach Mexico and then the United States.

The film’s director, Gregory Nava, joined the list of OAS petitioners because he “wanted to turn the consciousness” developed by his film “into some kind of action.”

Schey said only about one-half of one percent of those Guatemalans who seek asylum are granted that status. About 3% of political asylum applicants from El Salvador have been granted such status over the past few years.

Separate measures pending in Congress would suspend deportation of Salvadorans and grant temporary asylum to Guatemalans. About 500,000 Salvadorans and 200,000 Guatemalans are now believed to be living in the United States.