‘Ask the Immigrants’

Michael D. Nutter reported in a letter to The Times (July 12) that he wept when he read your editorial (July 4), “Ask the Immigrants.” My reaction was similar, but I wonder if we read the same newspaper.

A front-page story (July 12) refers to a suit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service by a coalition of immigrants’ rights groups to halt the practice of holding undocumented children as “bait” in order to apprehend their parents. It seems that children held in detention by the INS may not be released to anyone other than a parent, and in order for a parent to claim a child he or she must submit to questioning that leaves them vulnerable to prosecution and possible deportation if they also are undocumented.

On June 27 you featured a story of a mother and five children detained in Pasadena by the INS when they were apprehended crossing the Mexican border illegally. They came here desperate and with little money in order to be with the oldest son of the family who had become a victim of sexual abuse here.

Beginning in late May you chronicled the four-day hunger strike at the INS Detention Center in El Centro by detainees protesting the inhumane conditions there. Your stories brought it to the attention of the public that detainees at El Centro, many of them Salvadoran and Guatemalan men fleeing the violent and indiscriminate persecution in their homelands, are forced to remain exposed to the desert heat 12 hours a day with no access to their air-conditioned barracks and little shade. In fact, for the last three years the approach of summer weather has provoked a hunger strike in a desperate attempt to call attention to this situation, inadequate medical care and overcrowding. This year the INS found it necessary to forcibly break the strike.

In light of these recent illustrations, I marvel at the ease with which your editorial can proclaim that we practice what we preach in the United States, “the freest, most compassionate, most democratic, most just and idealistic country in the history of the world.” It could be that we are, but that certainly doesn’t say much for other possible candidates. If we follow your advice by going to the immigrants seeking a reaffirmation of our virtues, I suspect that there are at least some who may have a different story to offer us.

DONALD LINDSAY SMITH

Los Angeles

Rev. Smith is chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Resettlement Commission of the Southern California Ecumenical Council.