Refugees Given 20 Days to Seek Asylum Outside S. Texas

Central American refugees were given a 20-day stay Tuesday to apply for political asylum without fear of being trapped in the Rio Grande Valley, and the federal judge presiding over the case strongly chastised immigration authorities for allowing illegal aliens to live in abject squalor while their fates are being determined.

“I’m not going to view the kind of disgrace and kind of problem created by this policy,” said U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela. “It is not my intent to sit back and be a spectator in my community and my country. I am disturbed.”

But at the same time, Judge Vela said he was inclined to agree with immigration authorities on the major issue of Tuesday’s hearing--that the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not have to go through a complicated process before imposing new regulations on how the asylum process works. If Vela does remove a temporary restraining order now in effect, the INS could begin holding political asylum applicants in South Texas within three weeks.

The judge’s indication that he would probably side with immigration authorities, despite the admonishment, caused government lawyers to declare a victory of sorts. But they also said that immigration officials in the new Bush Administration would look closely at practices that led to the refugees’ suit against the government.

At issue in this dusty border town, one of the major points of entry for Central American refugees, was how they would be treated while applying for political asylum. Last December, the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued a new set of rules, based on the claim that almost all political asylum applications from Central American countries are frivolous.

Chief among those new rules was that illegal aliens must wait at their point of entry for the asylum applications to be processed. That, in turn, led to a buildup of illegal aliens in the Brownsville area. At one point, hundreds of aliens were living in open fields and an abandoned motel, many of them with no warm clothing and little to eat.

On Jan. 9, Judge Vela issued a temporary restraining order that allowed the refugees to leave South Texas and apply for asylum in other parts of the country. Since issuing that order, more than 6,000 refugees have filed for asylum and left South Texas. According to INS figures, about half of them have gone to Miami, while an estimated 10% traveled to the Los Angeles area.

During the hearing, immigration officials tried to paint a picture of refugees as people who would disappear once allowed to leave the Rio Grande Valley, while a lawyer for the refugees said the government was largely responsible for the number of Central American aliens, particularly Nicaraguans, who were crossing into the United States.

Allen Hausman, a Justice Department lawyer, said that huge numbers of aliens would be lost in the system, and one of his examples cited California statistics that of the 1,417 asylum applications in Los Angeles and San Francisco, only 74 had appeared to pursue their cases.

“They can potentially disappear among the 240 million Americans,” said Hausman. “They need not pursue asylum.”

Says Policy Hardens

Robert Rubin, a lawyer for the refugees, contended, meanwhile, that the hardening of the immigration policy was essentially a change of heart by the American government. He contrasted the new INS policy with that in 1987, when 84% of the Nicaraguans who applied were granted political asylum. He said the same figure for 1988 was more than 50%. And now, he said, the policy is to keep them out altogether.

Rubin also contended there should have been much more public debate on the new INS policy before it was put in effect, asserting that refugees, local health officials and a local shelter had known nothing of the new guidelines.

Rubin said the new rules “interfere with the ability to file for asylum and the ability to survive.

“Instead, these people were forced to sleep out in the rain and cold while they attempted to file an application for asylum,” he told the judge. “This policy is designed to starve people out of the asylum process.”

At the end of the arguments by both sides, Judge Vela told immigration officials that he would not stand for any more of the conditions in Brownsville that brought national attention to the refugees held here under the new rules. He said that if conditions did not improve, he would immediately grant another request for injunctive relief.

“I insist that you take off your adversarial hat,” Vela told immigration lawyers. He also said he did not agree with the new immigration policy, but would probably have to lift the restraining order because the INS seemed to have followed the letter of the law.

William Joyce, an INS lawyer, said after the hearing that he believes there will be another surge of new refugees once word is out that only 20 days are left.

“I think you might see a lot of Central Americans coming through here in the next three weeks,” he said.