Stop Threatening Salvadoran Refugees, U.S. Judge Orders INS

In a rebuke of U.S. immigration authorities, a Los Angeles federal judge late Friday ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to stop using threats and coercion to dissuade Salvadoran refugees from applying for political asylum in this country.

The 63-page ruling by U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon affects all Salvadorans who have applied for political asylum or who may do so in the future.

There are no firm figures on the number of applications currently on file. As late as last year, the INS reported that about 25,000 applications from Salvadorans in Los Angeles were pending. The ruling is considered significant by immigrant advocates because so few Salvadorans have been granted political asylum in the past.

In the 1985 fiscal year, for example, 74 Salvadorans were granted political asylum. By comparison, 2,229 applications were denied. In the same period, 2,779 Iranians and 408 Nicaraguans were granted asylum.

There are an estimated 750,000 Salvadorans who live in the United States, with more than 50% of them in the Los Angeles area.

Permanent Injunction

In his ruling, Kenyon granted a petition for a permanent injunction that ordered the INS to routinely inform all Salvadorans detained that they have a right to apply for political asylum, legal counsel and even access to pay telephones.

It reaffirmed a preliminary injunction the judge issued six years ago in which he ruled that the INS routinely used threats to talk Salvadorans out of their rights. In some instances, he held in 1982, some refugees were denied legal representation by being moved to more remote detention centers.

Kenyon concluded Friday that the INS was ignoring his preliminary injunction.

“The INS has continued to engage in a pattern and practice of pressuring Salvadorans to accept voluntary departure (to their homeland) despite the existence of the preliminary injunction,” Kenyon wrote.

INS personnel violated the Salvadorans’ First Amendment rights “by confiscating legal rights material and other written materials,” the ruling said.

Ruling Is Hailed

Lawyers for several civil rights organizations hailed the ruling.

“He found the INS guilty of running roughshod over the Salvadorans,” said lawyer Linton Joaquin, executive director of the Central American Refugee Center who help litigate the class-action lawsuit.

“The decision really affirms the fact that Salvadorans with valid claims (for political asylum) were simply being denied justice.”

Added Charles Wheeler, director of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles:

“It shows the hypocrisy of the U.S.’s domestic and foreign policy.”

During the non-jury trial--during which 180 witnesses testified intermittently over a 2-year period--civil rights lawyers called more than 50 Salvadorans to the witness stand to show how the INS denied them access to lawyers or the option of applying for political asylum.

But more importantly to immigrants’ lawyers, they testified about why they had left their homeland, where they charged that political terror was commonplace.

“I was hit in the forehead with a butt of a rifle many times,” one Salvadoran, Jose Israel Gomez Murrillo, testified in late 1985. “I still have the scars.

“Then . . . I was put in a sink, a tub, of water that was electrified. It was . . . hell.”

Kenyon in his opinion chastised immigration authorities for discounting such stories.

“The impressions of INS agents and officials that Salvadorans come to the United States solely for economic gain reflect a lack of sensitivity and understanding and derive from ignorance . . . (of) the complex motivations and situations of those who fled El Salvador,” the judge said.

“These impressions further reflect the limitations of INS’ processing system and training.”

During the trial, INS attorneys denied many of the assertions about INS abuses. And late Friday, the government’s lead attorney in the case said he was not surprised by Kenyon’s ruling.

“The outline of (Friday’s) ruling was said in the preliminary injunction,” said attorney Allen Hausman, assistant director of the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation in Washington.

While not commenting directly on the ruling, Hausman spoke out against the opinion’s sweeping protections of Salvadorans in the United States.

“Clearly, the judge is setting a standard of relief for Salvadorans which doesn’t exist for any other nationality,” he said. “How can you say a person from Haiti or South Africa or Iran is less deserving? It’s hard to distinguish.”

Hausman said it was not immediately clear if the INS would appeal the ruling.

In the ruling, Kenyon required the INS to prepare a document that will be passed out to Salvadoran detainees, or read to them if they cannot read, to inform them of their rights. A draft is to be submitted to him within 30 days.

The INS was also forbidden from transferring detainees to remote locations or shipping them out if they have consented to voluntary departure without giving ample notice to interested relatives or lawyers.