Immigration Rights Case Becomes Forum for El Salvador Stories

Much to the dismay of U.S government attorneys, a Los Angeles federal court trial on whether U.S. immigration officials violate the civil rights of Salvadoran refugees has become a volatile political forum for horror stories about life in the war-torn Central American nation.

The trial is supposed to focus on whether U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials are obeying a 1982 court order requiring them to tell Salvadorans that they have a right to apply for political asylum.

However, it has blossomed into a highly charged debate on American foreign policy and conditions at INS detention centers across the country. The trial, which began late last year, has featured a parade of witnesses recounting beatings, torture and random murders that marked their lives in El Salvador. It has brought U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon into conflict with the U.S. State Department as he tries to dig deeper into what is really happening in El Salvador today.

During an emotional day of testimony last week, Eriberto Reyes, a former bus driver who said he transported weapons for both government soldiers and anti-government guerrillas, described several encounters with the Salvadoran National Police before he fled to the U.S.

One evening on his way home he was blindfolded, kidnaped, beaten, knocked unconscious and thrown down a cliff into a city dump, he testified.

“They said, ‘If you say something about this we are not going to kill you. We are going to kill your family,’ ” Reyes told Kenyon in testimony translated by an interpreter.

Reyes, who looks 10 years older than his 33 years, said having to leave his three children behind in El Salvador is “the same as dying while you are alive.”

Reyes was arrested last year by the INS for entering the U.S. illegally. He has applied for political asylum and was turned down, but he is appealing.

Instead of limiting the witnesses’ dramatic accounts of torture and terror in El Salvador, Kenyon has encouraged them to discuss their personal experiences, as well as the dangers they face if they are deported to their homeland.

Standing Objection Filed

In protest, attorneys for the INS have filed a standing objection to all testimony about conditions in El Salvador, saying that kind of information is irrelevant.

Kenyon, who is hearing the matter without a jury, has been taking his own notes throughout the testimony detailing the torture in El Salvador and the coercion, harassment and trickery Salvadoran refugees have allegedly suffered at the hands of U.S. immigration officials.

“In the final analysis, we are dealing with people’s lives and emotions. We cannot afford to simply be cruel,” Kenyon told the government attorneys before he intervened to help one distraught witness to be released on bond from an INS detention center in Hollywood. The move was opposed by INS attorneys.

Kenyon had previously ordered the INS to return the same woman to the U.S. to testify, after she said she had been drugged with Valium for several days before being forced to sign a voluntary deportation form.

The case, which government attorneys privately predict will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, is taking place against the backdrop of the continuing civil war in El Salvador.

Advantage Claimed

Last year, both the U.S.-supported Salvadoran government and the rebels claimed to have held the upper hand, according to political observers.

While the army has dramatically increased its military hardware and number of aircraft, the rebels have stepped up their attacks on urban areas, coffee processing plants and banks. Rebels also assaulted the army’s main military school and shot up two outdoor cafes last July.

Since 1980, about 50,000 civilians have been killed or disappeared, according to various sources.

U.S financial support for President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s government has increased substantially, with the government expected to receive about $450 million from the U.S. this year, compared to $174 million in 1981.

Human rights activists say murders have gone down, but Salvadorans sent home by the INS are still in danger of being arrested or at least harassed.

There are fewer people being killed than there were five years ago, but “the level of human rights violations continues to be high,” said an American human rights worker living in San Salvador, the nation’s capital.

700 Political Prisoners

There are more than 700 political prisoners, according to recent Salvadoran army reports. In the first six months of 1985, 1,500 people were detained for questioning but many were apparently released, said the woman from the detention center in a recent telephone interview. She asked not to be named.

“The issue the judge has to decide is what happens to people who go back to El Salvador,” said ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum, who is among the lawyers representing the refugees. “The people who are responsible for the atrocities over the past six years are still at the highest levels of government.”

One issue the case focuses on is a collection of sensitive U.S. government reports and documents detailing conditions in El Salvador. Late last year, Kenyon asked the State Department for the material, but was told its release would compromise national security.

Angered by the refusal, he demanded the material, saying he was ready to “play hardball” with the State Department. After a lengthy delay, some of the reports were released. Kenyon said he will review the material in his chambers before deciding whether to release it to attorneys for the Salvadorans, as they have requested.

“To reveal the human rights situation in El Salvador and to discuss the involvement of present Salvadoran officials has been defined as affecting the national defense of the U.S.,” Rosenbaum said. “The U.S. government is prepared to forfeit the lives of Salvadorans for a foreign policy objective.”

Same Treatment Urged

Government attorneys argue that Salvadorans who enter the U.S. illegally should not be treated any differently than the other million or so illegal immigrants arrested by the INS each year.

The attorneys said if every illegal immigrant applied for political asylum, it would create a nightmare of paper work for an already overburdened immigration system.

“The case focuses on whether or not Salvadorans are entitled to these rights and whether or not we coerce them to leave,” said William Joyce, associate general counsel for the INS. “The government has yet to put on its case. We plan to rebut all the coercion charges.”

The refugees are represented by a group of attorneys from such organizations as the San Fernando Valley Immigrants’ Rights Center and the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles. The lawyers say it is U.S. support of the war in El Salvador that forces their clients to flee to the U.S.

Although no one knows for sure, there are an estimated 500,000 Salvadorans living in the U.S. According to INS statistics, 97% of those Salvadorans who apply for political asylum are denied the first time.

“This case potentially affects every Salvadoran in the U.S.,” said Sandra Pettit, an attorney for the Immigrants’ Rights Office of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. She said many Salvadorans are afraid to apply for asylum because doing so subjects them to arrest and detainment until their case is heard. Although they can be released on bond, many are too poor to hire a lawyer or raise the money for their release.

Few Get Asylum

And very few Salvadorans are granted asylum. In fiscal 1985, 74 Salvadorans were granted political asylum. In comparison, 2,299 applications were denied, according to an INS annual report filed in court, and 500 cases were still pending at year’s end. In contrast, 2,779 Iranians and 408 Nicaraguans were granted asylum.

The fact that people from Communist countries, such as Chinese tennis star Hu Na and a group of Romanian sailors, were granted political asylum within one day points to the “highly politicized character of the political asylum system,” according to Arthur Helton, director of the political asylum project for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York City.

Helton, who testified in the refugee trial this week, said a major problem for Salvadorans is that they are are locked up in remote INS detention centers with little access to legal help. Of the 2,000 people incarcerated in eight INS centers across the country, more than 700 are Salvadorans, according to INS figures.

Bad Living Conditions

Testimony about the detention centers has focused on substandard living conditions and detainees being denied access to telephones and lawyers.

Refugee witness Reyes, who was detained for about three months in El Centro, said he and a dozen other men were held for hours at a time in a small room with nothing but a urinal.

Reyes, who helped organize a hunger strike at the El Centro detention center last year, said there was no library or legal pamphlets, and the use of pencils was limited to two hours in the evening.

“The INS detention centers are a horror show we don’t subject the worst criminals to,” said the ACLU’s Rosenbaum in an interview.

Joyce, the government’s attorney, declined to comment on the witnesses’ specific allegations about the centers but said the government’s witnesses will rebut the refugees’ testimony when it presents its case.