Rights of Refugees Argued in Sanctuary Case Appeal

An attorney for eight Arizona sanctuary workers told a federal appeals court Friday that the defendants believed that the Central American aliens they aided were refugees with a right to live in the United States.

Attorney Michael Tigar told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena that a Tucson trial judge improperly barred the sanctuary workers from presenting evidence of their beliefs concerning the refugees.

But a government attorney, urging the court to uphold convictions of all eight defendants, said it was clear the workers never believed that they were acting legally and knew that smuggling aliens was against the law.

Donald M. Reno, who prosecuted the case for the U.S. attorney’s office in Tucson, said their conspiracy was clearly illegal.

“In this case, these defendants were methodically smuggling these aliens into the United States,” he said. “Everything they were doing was surreptitious and clandestine.”

He said they had falsified documents and urged aliens to lie to immigration officers when asked about their country of origin.

The eight, five of whom are clergymen, were convicted on various charges of conspiracy, transporting and harboring and aiding illegal entry of aliens in a highly publicized 1986 trial. All received probation. Several other defendants were acquitted, pleaded guilty to misdemeanors or had charges dismissed.

Six of the eight who were convicted were present for the arguments.

Tigar, of the University of Texas Law School at Austin, described his interpretation of the law governing refugees for the judges:

“Anyone who is a refugee . . . has the right to have that status recognized regardless of his mode of entry” into the country, he said. “Refugee status is something you have because of something that happened to you in your country of origin.”