INS Bows to Texas City, Moves Amnesty Office
The Immigration and Naturalization Service will stop processing amnesty applicants in a building that city officials closed last week because of health and safety violations, an INS official said today.
Armed with bolt cutters and a temporary restraining order, INS officials on Monday returned to the former furniture store where the agency processes more than 2,000 political asylum applicants weekly.
Officials in this small southern Texas town have complained that refugees, most of them from Central America, had left the building and surrounding area cluttered with litter and human waste.
INS Dist. Director Omer G. Sewell said today the agency will no longer process asylum applications in Harlingen and will handle the south Texas cases at the INS detention center about 25 miles from town.
Candidates seeking amnesty under the 1986 immigration reform law will continue to be served at the Harlingen building, he said.
“We want to be good citizens in this community as well,” Sewell said.
The new asylum office will open Wednesday at the agency’s Port Isabel Service Processing Center.
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