Lady Liberty Double Seized in INS Protest

While Lady Liberty was being toasted in New York on Thursday, police in Hollywood were handcuffing her double after arresting her on a charge of trespassing at a detention facility used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to hold illegal aliens.

Clad in a white sheet, chains and a silver tiara, and carrying a tinfoil torch, social worker Sue Ryan and seven other members of an immigrants rights group had chained themselves to the facility’s front gate to call attention to the plight of Central American refugees in Los Angeles.

A secretary at the detention facility, Doreen Tellez, 26, made a citizen’s arrest and turned the group over to police who were standing by. The eight protesters were taken to the Hollywood police station where they were booked and then released on their own recognizance, Sgt. David Kalish said.

‘National Disgrace’

“What the entire nation is being inundated with is the Statue of Liberty image and the poem--’Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,’ ” said Ryan, 26, before being led away by police. “Yet we are now standing before a national disgrace--one that Lady Liberty would completely abhor.

“We’re contradicting our own history by denying a haven for people who are fleeing economic and political oppression,” said Ryan, whose grandparents migrated to the United States from Ireland in the early 1900s.

During the protest, Ryan and the other members of Women of Conscience, an inter-faith organization of church women, attempted to deliver political asylum applications and other information to the 117 detainees inside the facility, who they claim are being abused and denied their rights.

Under Court Order

However, Dona Coultice, an INS spokeswoman, said the INS is under a court order to provide Central American refugees with information about legal aid, the right to file for asylum and to talk to an attorney. She said the contractor that runs the facility, Behavioral Systems Southwest Inc., is closely monitored to ensure there are no violations.

“There’s no problem with living conditions there,” Coultice said of the former motel that now serves as a holding facility. “There’s enough room, and the people are served three hot meals a day.”