Children Are ‘Bait,’ Suit Says : Group Charges INS Uses Them to Capture Parents

Children arrested by immigration authorities are being jailed in inadequate facilities and some are used as “bait” to capture their illegal alien parents, a coalition of immigration attorneys and other immigrants’ rights advocates charged Thursday.

The coalition said that a five-month study it had conducted found that about 2,000 children are being detained nationwide because of a recent U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service policy that prohibits the release of children on bond to anyone but their parents or legal guardians.

The INS has refused to release the children even to close relatives and to U.S. citizens with legal power of attorney from the parents. As a result, children are detained in a motley variety of facilities that often fail to meet state and federal licensing standards for juvenile detention centers, the advocates charged.

The allegations were made Thursday at a press conference called to announce the filing of a class-action suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The suit is aimed at ending the policy and establishing better living conditions for those juveniles now in detention.

Harold Ezell, western regional director of INS, said in an interview Thursday afternoon that the policy was implemented because of “concern about the welfare and well-being of the child.”

“There’s enough pictures of missing children on milk cartons now,” he said. “We’re not going to be a party to anything happening to these children, even though they’re here illegally.”

He added that he was not aware of any violations of state or federal law at any of the detention centers used to house juveniles.

“It is completely hypocritical for the INS to say they’re holding kids for their own good when they keep them away from family members who are ready and able to care for them,” said Peter Schey, executive director of the National Center for Immigrants Rights Inc.

2,000 Youths in Detention

Schey estimated that the number of youths in detention has increased from about 800 last year to more than 2,000 this year because of the new policy. Ezell said the policy has been on the books nationwide since at least 1983, but had not been followed consistently in this region until last fall, when he formalized it in a memo.

In one recent case, Schey said, a 6-year-old Nicaraguan girl who had memorized her mother’s telephone number in Los Angeles refused for six days to tell the number to immigration agents. When she did, he said, her mother was apprehended. Both are now undergoing deportation hearings.

The class-action suit was filed by the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights Inc. in Los Angeles, the National Center for Youth Law in San Francisco and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. The ad hoc coalition, which also includes the Southern California Ecumenical Council, said Thursday that it hopes to generate vast public interest in the issue.

‘Invites Child Abuse’

According to charges in the lawsuit, the centers where alien children are being held do not provide the clothing, recreation, schooling or protection from adult strangers that are granted to citizens detained as juvenile delinquents. The fact that alien children spend days--and, in some parts of the country, nights--with adult strangers in detention “simply invites child abuse,” Schey charged. However, he said he has no knowledge of specific cases of such abuse.

Other documents filed with the lawsuit indicate that young girls have been subjected for “security” reasons to strip searches, including vaginal searches, after meeting with their lawyers.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction preventing INS from requiring that the parents of alien minors be present as a condition of releasing their children on bond. It also would require the release of all minors in INS detention if specific improvements are not made in their living conditions.

Active in the ad hoc coalition is actor Ed Asner, who said he became involved after a friend called him about a 13-year-old Salvadoran girl being held in Los Angeles. The girl’s mother, a domestic who works for a friend of Asner’s, appeared at the press conference with a cloth over her face to protect her identity. She was referred to as “Ana.”

Ana’s daughter, Alma Yanira Cruz, 13, is a plaintiff in the class-action suit. Ana said she has not seen her daughter since Ana left El Salvador six years ago to seek work in Los Angeles after Ana’s father--the sole source of support for her family of five children--was assassinated.

Her daughter lived in El Salvador with an uncle until he too was assassinated, Ana said. The girl was on her way to Los Angeles to meet her mother when she was apprehended at the border six weeks ago.

Refused to Release Her

As is customary in deportation proceedings, Alma’s bond was set at $2,000. But, when attorneys presented the bond money, according to the lawsuit, INS agents insisted that a parent or legal guardian appear to pick her up. The agents refused to release her to a U.S. citizen who had a power of attorney signed by Alma’s mother, Schey said.

“I thought I knew a lot about Central America,” said Asner, who has been an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Central America. “But the detention of these children is a new twist that surprises even me. These children are being used as hostages by our own government. Hostages is a buzzword these days . . . but the word fits.”

Most of the minors now in INS detention are Central Americans who were apprehended at the border as they attempted to join their parents in the United States.

Usually a parent will come to the United States first to earn enough money to send for the remaining children, often one by one.

Ezell said INS policy is to keep children together with their mother in detention if they are apprehended together. A total of 51 children are in custody at an INS detention center in Pasadena, where most long-range juvenile detainees in this area are housed, he said. Thirty-one of those are with a parent, he said, and 20 without. They have been in custody an average of 28 days, he added, and their average age is 11.

He said INS policy allows for a child to be deported to his native country under the care of a responsible adult or relative with whom he has been traveling, but does not allow release of the child to a close relative or friend if the child is to remain here awaiting a deportation hearing.

Because of the growing number of detentions of illegal aliens in general and juveniles in particular, the INS has been forced to place children in a variety of housing ranging from foster homes in some parts of the country to juvenile halls in others, Schey said the survey indicated.

In a related development Thursday, INS announced that it will soon move its regional offices on Terminal Island to a federal office building in Laguna Niguel in Orange County. The Terminal Island building will be remodeled to provide a new 400-bed detention center, Ezell said, adding that he hoped it will provide additional facilities for children.