Christmas Gift From INS: Freedom

Lucy Lara thought she would “go mad” when she learned that her younger son, traveling to Los Angeles with their father from El Salvador, had been lost in the crossing.

Unbeknown to Lara’s husband, who had been mugged by the smugglers he hired to lead him and his sons across the border, 16-year-old Lehi Ricardo Lara had been picked up by U.S. immigration agents.

After several weeks, the family was reunited Wednesday in Los Angeles. In an unprecedented Christmas gesture--the result of negotiations between Harold Ezell, Western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony--Lehi and 23 other children and teen-agers were released from INS detention to be reunited with relatives or taken in by volunteer host families.

The children were released without posting the usual $2,000 bail and will be allowed to remain with friends and relatives, pending deportation proceedings that may take a year to begin, officials said.

“This is a historical moment for us,” Ezell said at a press conference where he was joined by Mahony and the 24 youngsters. The release of the children to the care of the church marks the first time that Ezell has agreed to such a wholesale release of minors to someone other than close relatives. And Ezell said he envisions the arrangement not as a one-time gesture but as an “ongoing program” with the church.

The agreement between Mahony and Ezell appears to address, at least in part, a controversy that has spawned lengthy litigation over the issue of children in INS custody. Although only two dozen were currently being held, as many as 120 children are in INS custody at any given time at facilities across Southern California, according to officials. The detention of those released Tuesday ranged from a few days to 14 months, according to volunteers who interviewed the children.

“(The release) highlights what the spirit of the season is all about--love for one another, especially the children,” Mahony said. He added that the refugee children, most of whom came from strife-torn Central American countries, “represent some of the sorrow, misery and uncertainty of the life they have experienced.”

The press conference, at which Ezell’s wife, Lee, and an INS detention officer-turned-Santa Claus distributed gifts to the youngsters and at which officials posed for photographs with the children, was a condition for the children’s release, according to church sources who asked to remain anonymous. They said Ezell insisted that Mahony and the children join him in making the announcement at the downtown Federal Building.

Afterward, the children were led to nearby Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, a center of the sanctuary movement for refugees in Southern California. There they were reunited with relatives and welcomed by friends and representatives from the organizations who worked through the church for their release. Volunteer physicians, lawyers, Hollywood actors and social workers were on hand to offer encouragement and assistance.

“We believe in miracles,” a jubilant Father Richard Estrada told the gathering. Estrada, who ministers to young people in INS detention centers and was among those who sought Mahony’s intercession on the children’s behalf, added that the day’s “good news” was in large measure a credit to the community groups who “pushed and made it happen.”

“It’s unbelievable that it took so much work, so much jostling and negotiating to accomplish something so proper,” added Father Luis Olivares, pastor of the church widely known as La Placita. Like other speakers, he said the Western INS region is the only one in the country that maintains a strict policy of releasing children only to close relatives or legal guardians.

Class-Action Suit

A class-action suit filed against INS in 1985 charges that children are held as “bait” in the INS Western region to elicit the surrender of parents or relatives for deportation. The INS has denied the charge.

About two weeks ago, a federal judge in Los Angeles, addressing part of the suit, consented to a settlement under which the INS will begin housing minors apart from unrelated adults and will provide better living conditions as well as visitation rights, said Peter Schey of the National Center for Immigrants Rights Inc., which brought the suit.

Calling Wednesday’s action by the INS “an important first step,” Schey nevertheless said a more permanent policy change is required. “One week from now the INS will have another 30 children to use as bait to detain their relatives,” he said.

Volunteers caring for the children said that all but a few of them have relatives in the United States. Some, however, like 15-year-old Leonides Contreras, do not know their precise whereabouts.

Searching for ‘Better Life’

The boy, who said he had worked as a field hand in his native El Salvador since he was 8 years old to help support his mother, said he came to the United States in search of a “better life.”

He has a sister and two uncles in California, but he does not know how to get in touch with them. Until he does, he will remain with Javier Guzman and his wife, one of the families who have volunteered to care for the children. Guzman, 39, a machinist originally from Mexico, said he volunteered because he remembered the “desperation” he felt when, in his own youth, he was arrested by immigration officers while working as a farmhand in Northern California.

Remembering the fear, boredom and depression that many of the youngsters described as their own experience while in detention, Guzman said he felt “a duty to help.”

Relatives Waiting

Some, however, like Lehi Ricardo Lara, were lucky enough to have relatives waiting for them. His father, recovered from the beating at the hands of smugglers, and his mother over her anguish at believing him lost are grateful despite the trials of recent months that the family is together for Christmas. The family plans to apply for political asylum.

“One comes to this country with the dream of freedom and progress,” said Lucy Lara, who fled her native country because as a nurse who had been conscripted to work for guerrilla forces she feared retaliation from authorities. “One doesn’t mind the suffering if at the end you achieve something, for the children more than anything, a chance for them to fulfill their lives and be useful members of society.”