Testifies in Salvadorans’ Suit Against INS : Was Doped, Forced to Sign Papers, Refugee Says

A Salvadoran woman who said she fled her homeland after her husband disappeared and her daughter was beaten and raped, tearfully described to a Los Angeles federal judge Tuesday how she was given tranquilizers for several days before being forced by U.S. immigration officials to sign a voluntary deportation form.

“I felt horrible. I felt I was going to die,” said Maria, a witness in a lengthy trial on a class-action suit filed by a group of Salvadoran refugees against the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The 44-year old woman, who once lived in a rural village in El Salvador, agreed to testify with reporters present only if her last name was not mentioned. She said she feared for the safety of her remaining family in the Central American nation.

After being arrested last summer and held for several days in two INS detention centers, she was taken to an office and ordered to sign the voluntary deportation form, Maria testified. The witness said she objected because she wanted to seek political asylum.

“ ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘My hands are shaking. How can I sign?’ ” Maria said, her testimony translated by an interpreter. “He (an INS official) grabbed my hand and made some Xs (on the paper.) I was crazy.”

Put on Plane

A few hours later, Maria testified, she found herself dressed in clean clothes and on a plane back to El Salvador.

Last December, U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon ordered the INS to return Maria to the United States to testify, saying, “You don’t treat people like that. I wouldn’t do that to the worst criminal who came in this courtroom.”

The lawsuit, filed in 1982 by the American Civil Liberties Union and several Los Angeles immigrants’ rights groups, seeks to enforce a court order issued by Kenyon four years ago. The order directs INS agents who arrest Salvadorans to fully explain their legal rights, including the right to a deportation hearing and the right to apply for political asylum.

Since the trial began late last year, several deported refugees testified that they were held for months in INS detention camps, were denied access to attorneys and telephones, and were moved from center to center. The witnesses also testified that they were harassed by INS officials if they asked for information on how to seek political asylum and often were threatened or tricked into signing voluntary deportation forms.

Allen Hausman, a Justice Department attorney heading the government defense team, said earlier in the trial that Salvadorans deserve no special treatment from the INS because the government would be flooded with paper work if the same rights were given to the millions of illegal immigrants arrested every year.

On Tuesday, Bill Joyce, associate general counsel for the INS, disputed Maria’s contention that she was improperly removed from the United States, but he declined to discuss specifics of the case.

Wearing a dark, printed dress and white sweater, Maria described the violence and bloodshed that led her to flee El Salvador last summer.

“They were picking up dead men and throwing them like hogs on a truck,” she said.

Decision to Flee

She said she decided to leave her brother and elderly parents behind to seek asylum hereafter giving up a long search for her 21 year-old daughter, who vanished after being raped by a group of soldiers.

Maria said she traveled for about two months on borrowed money to reach the United States last summer. After her money was stolen in Mexico, she rode a freight train, traveling without food or water to the border. Soon after crossing into the United States at Calexico by car, she was arrested by an INS agent who, she said, promised to help her and told her she could talk to a judge.

She said she was so upset at being detained that authorities gave her a steady supply of tranquilizers for her nerves. She took the pills for several days before being moved to a detention center in Pasadena. She never saw a judge.

About 24 hours before being forced to sign a voluntary deportation form, the tranquilizers were withheld, she said. “I had terrible headaches. I broke out in a cold sweat and felt faint and numb,” she said tearfully.

Former Dealings With INS

Kenyon is no stranger to INS matters. In May, 1985, he ruled that the INS violated a preliminary injunction by preventing immigration attorneys from seeing clients at an El Centro detention center. About 200 detainees had participated in a hunger strike to protest conditions at the center.

Earlier in the trial, when angered by the government’s reluctance to provide documents detailing current conditions in El Salvador, Kenyon said he was ready to “play hardball.” He ordered that several reports--including ones entitled “FBI Investigation on Salvadoran Death-Squad Connections with Salvadoran Expatriates in the U.S.” and “Use of Torture Update”--be released for his review. After a long delay, he received an 18-inch-thick stack of material. Kenyon still is to decide whether to release the reports to attorneys representing the Salvadorans.