Border Patrol Ignores Amnesty Rights, Aliens’ Advocates Say

When U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Gabriel Soto Saucedo on a San Diego street last June 15, Soto said he tried to convince the officers that they were making a mistake.

“I told them that I had been living in San Diego for almost 10 years, that I was in the process of applying for amnistia (amnesty),” Soto recalled as he sat on a park bench near the city’s southeast barrio. “But it didn’t matter to them. They told me I was lying. They said I lived in Tijuana. . . . They said I was a pollero (smuggler).”

Thus began an excruciating five-day ordeal in which, Soto said, he was arrested, driven around all night in a Border Patrol van, threatened, locked up in several facilities--and, finally, taken to a cell in El Paso, Tex., before he was finally able to post bond and return home. Apart from the emotional stress and financial loss, Soto said, his absence cost him both his jobs, only one of which he has managed to get back.

Illegal Coercion

Advocates for illegal aliens say such cases are not unusual along the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Critics charge that agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, an enforcement arm of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, have routinely failed to inform detained foreigners of the possibility for amnesty.

When detained aliens have asserted claims for amnesty, critics add, agents have also refused to believe that they may qualify and have illegally coerced prospective amnesty applicants into signing documents obliging them to return to Mexico. Because of the agents’ refusal to follow amnesty law directives, critics charge, many people have probably lost the chance to qualify for amnesty.

“That’s been going on here for months,” said Patricia Roybal Sutton, chairwoman of El Concilio de El Paso, a Latino rights group in El Paso.

“We get horror stories like that every day here,” said Rafael Torres, field director for the American Friends Service Committee office in Laredo, another Texas border town.

Government Guidelines

The alleged practice, critics charge, is in violation of government guidelines and provisions of the immigration law. They cite sections of the law requiring that arrested undocumented immigrants demonstrating prima facie or “non-frivolous” amnesty cases be given the opportunity to apply for legal status. Immigration service guidelines require that agents inform illegal aliens that they have the opportunity to establish an amnesty case.

Few victims are willing to air their complaints. Most are forced to return to Mexico, eventually making their way back to the United States illegally. Nonetheless, critics say, complaints are frequent enough to indicate widespread abuse by the agency.

U.S. officials deny the charges, insisting that their officers question apprehended foreigners with potential amnesty claims about their prospective eligibility. “If an apprehended alien can show he or she qualifies for legalization, we will give that alien an opportunity to apply,” said Richard Kenney, an immigration service spokesman in Washington.

U.S. authorities also deny coercion and say undocumented detainees are given the opportunity to be represented by attorneys at formal deportation hearings.

Opting for deportation proceedings may require additional time in custody, but it could ultimately work in the interest of prospective amnesty applicants concerned about maintaining continuous residence in the United States. (To qualify for amnesty, illegal immigrants who are not farm workers must demonstrate that they have lived in the United States continuously since Jan. 1, 1982.)

“We’re not removing people from the country who have eligible claims,” said William Veal, deputy chief for the Border Patrol sector in San Diego, which accounts for about one-third of arrests of illegal aliens along the border. “If they appear to be eligible for amnesty, we give them the guidance they need and encourage them to file applications.”

Part of the problem, immigrant advocate groups say, is that the criteria for initial eligibility is murky, leaving considerable discretion in the agents’ hands.

Critics maintain that the coercion Soto allegedly experienced is not unusual and that his case is singular only in one respect: He was strong-willed enough to resist Border Patrol pressure to sign a document that would have resulted in a trip to Mexico, courtesy of the Border Patrol.

Immigrant advocate groups say that untold numbers of potential amnesty applicants have probably taken the easy way out and signed the documents--thus interrupting their continuous residence in the United States and impairing their chances for legal status.

“What about all the other people who have signed the . . . forms under pressure from the Border Patrol and gone back to Mexico?” asked Marco Antonio Rodriguez, executive director of Centro de Asuntos Migratorios, a nonprofit immigration-assistance center in San Diego County that is helping Soto. “We only know about the people who had the willpower to spend time in detention and then had the opportunity to post bond.”

‘Voluntary Departure’

Each day, the Border Patrol records thousands of apprehensions of illegal aliens along the U.S.-Mexico border. The great majority of those apprehended are Mexican citizens who are quickly returned to Mexico after signing documents called “voluntary return” or “voluntary departure” forms. Only a relatively small proportion of those arrested opt to enter formal deportation hearings.

Jose Rodriguez, an attorney in El Paso, said he knows of at least two cases in which Mexican farm workers with potential legalization cases were directed to sign voluntary return forms despite their protestations that they planned to pursue amnesty claims. “There are a lot of people who ‘voluntarily’ departed in that fashion and then we never hear from them again,” said Rodriguez, chairman of the immigration task force of El Concilio de El Paso.

In San Diego County, which hosts the nation’s largest Border Patrol contingent, critics cite another case. In April, Border Patrol agents arrested Vidal Paiz on a street in El Cajon, where he lives, and attempted to force him to sign a voluntary return document, according to Roberto L. Martinez, co-chairman of a San Diego-based Latino rights group called the Coalition for Law and Justice.

Paiz, a native of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, said he has lived continuously in the United States since 1978 and appears to have a strong amnesty case, Martinez said. Despite threats, Martinez said, Paiz refused to sign the voluntary return form--citing his intention to file for amnesty--and was sent to the immigration detention center in El Centro, where he was held for more than three months until being released on bond on Aug. 7.

“He kept telling the Border Patrol that he had never left the country, that he was applying for amnesty,” Martinez said. “They told him he was lying and that he had just entered the United States and that he lived in Tijuana.”

Veal, the Border Patrol official, said Paiz told the agents that he had extensive absences from the United States since 1982. Martinez said Paiz never made such a statement.

In Soto’s case, the Border Patrol and the illegal worker also provide conflicting versions. Veal said Soto told the arresting agents that he arrived in the United States in 1983--after the Jan. 1, 1982, cutoff date for amnesty. Soto says he maintained adamantly that he had been in the country much longer.

Soto, a 30-year-old father of three and a native of Tijuana, said he has lived in San Diego continuously since November, 1977. Earlier this month, Soto said the immigration service issued him a legal work authorization card, the first step in a successful amnesty application.

When asked why he sought amnesty, Soto replied, “I want my children to have the kind of opportunities, the education, that I never had.”