Many Detainees Seen as Caught in a Nightmare of Immigration Laws

The big gray stone federal prison here was bound to erupt sometime, or so people warned. “The Joint Could Blow,” headlined a story in Atlanta Magazine in 1985.

A year later, two Cubans inmates were acquitted of inciting a riot in one of the cellblocks. The jury felt sorry for them. “We are somewhat ashamed of our government and the way things are going for those people,” the foreman said.

Civil rights lawyers championed the Cubans’ cause, but few listened. “I had politicians in Washington I respect tell me the problem is there is no constituency for the issue,” attorney Gary Leshaw said. “They told me it’s too bad they aren’t dairy farmers.”

Last week, the “joint” in Atlanta did blow, just like the “joint” in Oakdale, La. The worst fears of several clergymen’s and lawyers’ groups that have championed the cause of Cubans detained in federal facilities became reality.

Those champions include Cuban-born Roman Catholic bishops and lawyers with the ACLU and Atlanta Legal Aid. They have argued that most of the Cuban detainees are not the dregs of Castro’s Cuba--as often portrayed--but men caught in a nightmare because of flaws in U.S. immigration laws.

“The indefinite imprisonment of human beings who are not serving their sentences due to crimes they have committed cannot be justified,” read a recent joint statement by Bishops Augustin Roman of Miami and Enrique San Pedro of Galveston-Houston.

Most of the inmates in the Atlanta and Oakdale facilities technically are not prisoners, but detainees. They have served their time for crimes committed and are now awaiting release in a sluggish immigration process or a trip back to Cuba, the place they least want to go. Some have been waiting seven years.

“They have been caught up in a legal fiction, that they are not really here in America but in some suspended condition where they have no rights to due process,” said Atlanta lawyer Dale Schwartz, past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Dr. Charles King, head of the Urban Crisis Center in Atlanta, said he does not condone the Cubans’ prison uprising, but he understands why they did it. “All they’ve ever asked for is a fair hearing. What a little thing to ask!”

However, the Justice Department insists that the Cubans have had their day in court. “The federal courts ruled they should be deported,” spokesman Tom Stewart said. And officials make the case that they require discretionary powers over who gets to stay in America if the borders are to be controlled.

The 125,000 Cubans who arrived from Mariel--although welcomed by President Jimmy Carter--were illegal entrants. Almost all were given immigration paroles. They have melded quietly into society.

But some had been lawbreakers in Cuba--and they were locked up immediately. Others, the Justice Department says, violated their immigration paroles by committing crimes here.

About 3,600 Mariel Cubans--two-thirds of them detained in Atlanta and Oakdale--have finished their sentences for crimes and now find themselves in the legal limbo of being unwelcome here or in Cuba.

They languish in lockups. The Atlanta facility--a honeycomb of steel five stories high--is one of the most overcrowded in the system. Violence is common.

Court Restricts Rights

In 1983, U.S. District Judge Marvin H. Shoob ruled that this indefinite detention was unconstitutional. But a panel of appellate judges overturned his decision, agreeing with the government that the Cubans were not entitled to the same rights as American citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Shoob, in an uncommon posture for a federal judge, has spoken out in favor of the detained Cubans. “The American people have never understood about these people,” he said Friday. “They think they are all dangerous criminals and ought to be sent back . . . .

“But I’ve been through so many of the files. Many of them are not criminals at all, not unless you call people a criminal because they left an area without reporting to a parole officer or have a (drunk driving) violation.”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has not provided a breakdown of the crimes for which the Cubans were originally imprisoned, but spokesman Verne Jervis said that they “run the gamut,” from misdemeanors to murder.

Halfway Houses

Many have been through INS hearings. In fact, nearly 600 of the men were scheduled for transfer to halfway houses as a step to release.

“They were just caught up in red tape,” said Leshaw, who defends many Cubans for Atlanta Legal Aid. “Then, the State Department made its deal to return prisoners to Cuba and pulled the rug out from under them.”