Tale of Torture Cited in Trial Over INS Policy

A Salvadoran refugee who testified that he was tortured by his country’s security forces was the lead-off witness Tuesday in a trial that will decide whether U.S. immigration authorities should inform all illegals from El Salvador of their right to apply for political asylum in this country.

“I was hit in the forehead with the butt of a rifle many times,” said Jose Israel Gomez Murillo, 28. “I still have the scars.

“Then . . . I was put in a sink, a tub, of water that was electrified. It was . . . hell.”

Gomez Murillo said he was detained by Salvadoran security forces for no apparent reason in 1981 when he was forced to return to his homeland after unsuccessfully seeking political asylum in Mexico and Guatemala.

Speaking through a Spanish-language interpreter, he testified that he fled his homeland in 1980 after the director of a theater group he belonged to and a relative were killed by Salvadoran security forces.

He subsequently escaped to the United States and is fighting deportation to El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon issued a preliminary injunction in 1982 ordering Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to advise Salvadoran aliens of their right to ask for political asylum. That injunction remains in effect.

In many instances, attorney Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union said in opening arguments Tuesday, the court order has “done much good.”

But, he added, in many instances, immigration officials have ignored the order, telling apprehended Salvadorans that applying “would be a waste of time.”

Rosenbaum also complained that many Salvadoran refugees arrested by the INS are moved to detention centers in remote areas where legal counsel is difficult to obtain.

Justice Department attorneys did not give an opening statement, but said outside the court that they oppose a permanent instruction that the plaintiffs are seeking from Kenyon.

“The central legal issue is whether Salvadoran aliens have to be routinely notified that they can apply for asylum absent any expression of fear on their part to going home,” said attorney Allen Hausman, assistant director of immigration litigation for the U.S. Justice Department.

If federal authorities are required to routinely notify all Salvadorans captured, it will add to the backlog of cases before immigration judges, Hausman said.

Currently, as many as 25,000 Salvadorans are awaiting political asylum hearings in the Los Angeles area, he said.