Compromise Ordered on INS Seizure of Papers

A federal judge Tuesday ordered attorneys for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and advocates for farm-worker amnesty applicants to work out a compromise on a lawsuit filed against Border Patrol agents who have illegally seized documents from dozens of migrant workers.

U. S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving in San Diego ordered INS attorney Charles Hamilton and Stephen Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the California Rural Legal Assistance, to reach a compromise by April 24. CRLA lawyers teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the INS in December to stop the border agents from seizing the documents.

Seizure Stopped

On Tuesday, Hamilton argued that the lawsuit is moot because the INS stopped seizing documents in the Western Region in October and the practice was discontinued in the rest of the nation by Dec. 28. INS officials admitted that Border Patrol agents seized amnesty documents from about 350 people who had legally obtained them from INS offices.

However, Rosenbaum argued that the INS had not gone far enough. Rosenbaum said he wanted the INS to seek out the people whose papers had been seized and provide them with new documents. Dozens of migrants charged that Border Patrol agents forced them to sign phony confessions admitting that the documents they had received from INS offices were fraudulent. Rosenbaum also asked that these “confessions that were made through coercion” be stricken from the applicants’ files.

“The judge said that he saw some legitimate claims on these two issues and ordered both sides to work on a compromise,” Rosenbaum said.

Hamilton called the number of documents admittedly seized by Border Patrol agents insignificant. “The taking of documents from 350 people out of 1.3 million applicants is not a statistically significant number,” Hamilton said.

He added that the INS has already agreed to notify “everyone that the INS can identify who had their documents taken away.” He called the dispute minor.

Allowed to Work

Some workers have said they received their documents at border processing stations in Laredo, Tex., San Ysidro and Otay Mesa in the summer of 1987. The legal papers allowed them to work in the United States for up to 90 days, during which time they would also have to acquire more documentation to prove that they qualified for amnesty.

But the migrants said the documents given them by INS officials were seized at Border Patrol checkpoints by agents who accused them of buying them illegally and threatened them with prison terms.