INS Now Granting Aliens ‘Advance Parole’ for Emergency Trips

Illegal aliens who appear to be eligible for legal residency under the new immigration law now can receive permission for emergency foreign travel without jeopardizing their amnesty rights, federal officials announced Wednesday.

“It is for those who need to make a brief departure from the United States for a legitimate emergency or humanitarian purpose,” said Harold Ezell, western regional commissioner for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “The legitimate reasons may include a family obligation involving an occurrence such as an illness or a death of a close relative, or another family need.”

Ezell said his announcement is based on new instructions from INS headquarters in Washington.

Officials in the agency’s Los Angeles district office, which covers seven counties, had said Monday that they were still awaiting clear guidelines and had not yet begun to grant such permission--called “advance parole”--to illegal aliens.

That statement came after two illegal aliens living in Santa Ana--Reginaldo Garcia, 32, and his sister Maria de Rosario Gama Garcia, 37--revealed that they had been denied permission to visit their ill 77-year-old father in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Reginaldo Garcia said he has been in the United States since 1971 and works for a building contractor as a carpenter. Maria Garcia said she has been in the country since 1979 and is an assembly-line worker at an Irvine computer factory.

During an interview Wednesday, the two said they first learned of their father’s failing condition from a brother in Mexico, who wired them Dec. 2 to say that their father had been hospitalized and that the family “fears for his life.”

The Garcias said that they contacted Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Santa Ana Latino activist organization and that a representative accompanied them to the Santa Ana office of the INS Dec. 3.

An agent there asked the Garcias to provide a letter from a doctor specifying the seriousness of their father’s condition. On Dec. 10, the Garcias said, they provided the letter but that the agent then said that he had received instructions to deny all such requests regardless of circumstances.

The Garcias said they returned five days later to renew their request and were given the same reply.

Reginaldo Garcia said that he was optimistic at first, “but now I don’t know what to think.”

Maria Garcia said that she has felt nothing but frustrated since the first denial. “We didn’t know what to do,” she said. “. . . These last several days have been very difficult.”

Reginaldo Garcia said he and his sister were faced with a dilemma when they learned of their father’s condition: They seemingly had to choose between going to see their father, thereby risk1768843040return to the United States, and waiting until May, when the amnesty takes effect, thereby risking arriving in Mexico too late, he said.

“This is something very painful and sad,” Maria Garcia said.

But Ezell, speaking at a press conference Wednesday in his office on Terminal Island, said the Garcias’ problems are over.

They will meet with INS officials in Santa Ana today,(Thursday) he said, and “from what I understand, it’s a clear case of an emergency need, and they’ll be on their way with advance parole,” he said.

Ezell said that other district offices, including San Diego, began granting advance parole several weeks ago, based on a different interpretation of instructions from Washington.

The Los Angeles district office covers Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

Advance parole is available to illegal aliens who can show prima facie eligibility for legal status and who have a legitimate need to travel outside the country, Ezell said. Merely wishing to be home for the holidays would not be sufficient, but a wedding in the family could be, he said. Some non-family matters may also be significant enough to justify advance parole, he added.

To qualify for amnesty, and thus be eligible for advance parole, illegal aliens must be able to show that they have lived in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1982, or have spent at least 90 days doing agricultural work in this country in the 12-month period that ended May 1.

Information in applications for advance parole will not be used to apprehend or deport illegal aliens, Ezell said.

Ezell also announced that illegal aliens who can show eligibility for amnesty but were deported or otherwise expelled from the country by INS after the Nov. 6 enactment of the law will be readmitted to the United States.

The law states that illegal aliens who appear to qualify for amnesty “may not be deported,” but various immigrants’ rights groups have claimed that such deportations have occurred.

Illegal aliens who “unknowingly” departed the United States after Nov. 6 will also be readmitted, according to the new INS instructions. This, like some other aspects of the law and regulations implementing it, promptly caused confusion.

The meaning of this point was clarified when Paul Schmidt, INS acting general counsel, spoke with Ezell and several reporters by telephone. Schmidt said it refers to situations such as an illegal alien’s being asleep in a vehicle that exits the country without his or her knowledge. A federal lawsuit filed against the INS in Sacramento by immigrants’ rights groups cites such an incident.

Ezell had said earlier that the instruction meant that illegal aliens who departed the United States after Nov. 6 but could show evidence of eligibility for legal status would be readmitted. After hearing Schmidt contradict this, Ezell corrected himself and said that someone in that situation would not be readmitted.

Times staff writer Juan Arancibia contributed to this story.