Obstruction Issue Delays Deportation Case Against 8

An immigration judge on Friday ordered a hearing on whether there was obstruction of justice when the government last month refused to allow a witness to testify in the case of eight Los Angeles-area aliens charged with belonging to a radical faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The judge’s decision--five months after the arrests--came in response to a plea by defense counsel Leonard Weinglass to throw out the deportation charges. The eight defendants, accused of being national security risks because of their alleged membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have denied the accusation.

To allow the hearings to proceed, Weinglass argued, is to allow the government “to play with my clients’ lives for five months. That’s why these proceedings have to stop now. It’s making a farce . . . out of a judicial proceeding.”

Delays Rile Attorney

Clearly piqued at the delays, the lead attorney for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Esmeralda Cabrera, urged Judge Ingrid K. Hrycenko to “get on with . . . these deportation proceedings.” Turning to the aliens’ defense team, Cabrera, the INS’ associate general counsel in Washington, asked, “What are you scared of?”

Hrycenko, however, took exception to Cabrera’s remark that the judge was being “harassed” by defense lawyers into hearing the obstruction of justice issue rather than immediately proceeding with the deportation hearings. The government’s decision not to produce a witness as she had ordered, the judge said, was “an affront to the court.” Under Immigration Court rules, however, she noted that she could not issue a contempt citation.

Hrycenko’s decision to schedule the obstruction of justice hearing, set for July 23, upset INS officials. “At the rate this thing is going, we’ll get to the merits in 1989,” said Bill Joyce, the INS’ acting deputy general counsel in Washington. “You’d think we’re before the Supreme Court.”

After a lengthy FBI investigation, the eight aliens--seven Jordanians and a Kenyan--were arrested Jan. 26. No criminal charges were filed. Prosecutors charged that the eight belonged to the PFLP, which has a violent history, primarily in the Mideast, and that they represent a potential danger in this country. In April, the government suddenly changed the charges, accusing two of subversion and the other six of visa violations.

Witness Not Produced

Then, on May 11, INS attorneys did not produce the government witness as ordered by Hrycenko. He was Gilbert Reeves, the INS supervising criminal investigator here who signed the original arrest orders last December. Defense lawyers wanted to question Reeves as to what he knew when he signed the orders and, most importantly, whether he was properly deputized to do so. Normally, such orders have to be signed by the permanent INS district director, Ernest E. Gustafson, but he was out of town at the time.

Instead, government attorneys issued new arrest orders on May 11, signed by Gustafson. The maneuver angered Hrycenko, who then terminated the hearings. The next day, May 12, the government refiled the same charges against the eight aliens.

On Friday, defense lawyers argued that restarting the hearings constitutes double jeopardy. But government attorney Cabrera countered that there is no double jeopardy in Immigration Court.

Opposition to Move

Defense attorneys pressed on Friday to put Reeves on the stand on July 23, but INS attorney Cabrera opposed the move.

“The government willfully wanted to terminate a proceeding that was going badly for them” and start again, Weinglass argued.