Law Students Offer to Assist Cubans Facing Deportation

About 90 Los Angeles law students have joined a nationwide group of aspiring lawyers who have volunteered to counsel the Cuban detainees who rioted at two federal prisons late last year and are now facing deportation hearings.

So far, more than 300 students at six law schools across the country--including about 40 each from USC and UCLA, with a few from other area law schools--have answered an appeal from an Atlanta civil liberties group that is organizing the project.

Without their help, the law students were told by organizers at campus meetings this week, the Cubans, many of them facing deportation, may lose the advantages that would be gained by being represented by someone with a legal background.

“A lot of these Cubans don’t know what rights they have,” Atlanta organizer Steven Donziger told USC students. “You can make a difference.”

Although they do have some privileges in prison, the detainees have virtually no rights in this country since they were admitted in a parole-like status that has never been adjusted.

‘Socially Involved’

The students were receptive to the plea for help.

“I want to be socially involved in the world and affect social policy,” said UCLA law student Wayne Morrow, 40, who helped set up a recruiting and training session on the Westwood campus. “I want to make the world a better place.”

A USC law student, Alexandra Day, 35, agreed: “It’s really important to people who really have nothing. If you can do it, then it’s a help to them.”

The Atlanta-based Coalition to Support Cuban Detainees began the recruiting effort several weeks ago after the government announced that it would review of the cases of the 2,400 Cubans involved in the riots at federal penitentiaries in Atlanta and Oakdale, La.

The coalition, supported by a $25,000 grant from a liberal New York philanthropic foundation, has been involved in detainee-related issues since 1985.

As a condition of ending the riots in early December, federal authorities agreed to the reviews to see whether the detainees should be set free in the United States or returned to Cuba. The 2,400 Cubans were transferred to other facilities, including 293 who were sent to the federal prison near Lompoc, in Santa Barbara County, where informal review hearings are scheduled to begin Feb. 4.

Under the review process, the detainee’s file will first be screened. If freedom is rejected, an informal hearing conducted by two Immigration and Naturalization Service examiners can be held to interview the detainee, go over his personal history and determine whether he has legitimate employment and education plans if released.

Before approving release, the examiners must conclude that the person is nonviolent, likely to remain nonviolent and unlikely to engage in criminal activity upon release. A third review can take place if the detainee is turned downed at the interview.

Donziger, who is not an attorney, said the detainees can have the assistance of anyone they choose at the informal hearing; the person need not be a lawyer.

Call Went Out to Students

But although the hearings are not legal proceedings, lawyers would be ideal to assist the detainees because of their knowledge of constitutional issues, he said. But there are not enough lawyers interested, so the call went out to the law students.

The biggest problem facing the would-be attorneys may be the detainees themselves, who are different from others doing time in federal prison, Donziger said. Inmates usually have fixed terms of punishment to serve, but that is not the case for the detainees. They can remain in prison indefinitely while in the United States.

Donziger said this is the case because the INS considers them to be “excludable aliens”--immigrants who either pose a danger the United States or who entered the country without the proper documents. But unlike other illegal aliens, those who left Cuba during the Mariel boat lift in 1980 could not be returned home.

And since many of them admitted to criminal pasts in Cuba, even minor offenses in this country have meant indefinite incarceration.

USC law student Danniel Wexler, for example, recently handled the case of one detainee, whom he called Manuel, and told the following story:

The detainee has been in federal custody for four years after serving nine months in a California state prison for leaving a halfway house without authorization. “(Federal immigration officers) were waiting for him when he got out of prison,” Wexler said.

“He doesn’t know when he’s getting out (of prison).”

Fellow USC law student David Meckler, 24, argued that “the Cubans, by and large, are no more dangerous than anyone else standing in the streets.”

High Crime Incidence

But authorities say that the Cuban detainees, also called Marielitos, were involved in criminal activity while they were briefly free in the United States. Los Angeles police, for example, have reported a high incidence of crimes in recent years involving Marielitos in the Pico-Union area and the MacArthur Park neighborhood.

Donziger said 4,000 Cubans are serving sentences for various offenses in state prisons throughout the United States. When they complete their sentences, they, too, will be taken into custody by INS authorities, he said.

Two assistant law professors at USC who will supervise the students’ work over the next few months at Lompoc, Noel M. Ragsdale and Charles Weisselberg, said the students’ work with the detainees is no different than other off-campus projects operated by the law schools at USC and UCLA.

At USC, students can participate in a post-conviction justice program in which they offer help to inmates for problems that occur inside jail, such as loss of privileges because of an infraction. Both schools have a poverty law program in which students can work with agencies like the Inner City Law Center in Skid Row to help the homeless and the poor.

“It gives them a marvelous window of what it’s really like to be a lawyer, to have clients,” Ragsdale said.

Warned to Keep Cool

But the students, who will have to car-pool for the 3 1/2-hour drive to Lompoc for the hearings, have been warned to temper their zeal during the sessions, which could last an hour or so.

During the training sessions earlier this week at USC and UCLA, Donziger cautioned the volunteers against overaggressiveness at the hearings. At one point, he told the UCLA students:

“When you enter the hearing room, they (INS examiners) will ask your name and who you are with. Be cordial in your answer. If they do not ask you, introduce yourself. Explain what else you do as a resident of this area . . . always giving the impression you are in the mainstream of American life and therefore are just as concerned about public safety as they are.”

As the students milled about after the local training sessions concluded, most of them were confident that they will be of help to the detainees.

“I think law students can make a difference,” mused Wexler, 24, “even if some of us don’t pass the Bar.”