Judge Halts Deporting of Salvadorans, Says INS Violated Asylum Help Order

A federal judge in Los Angeles has halted the deportation of several hundred Salvadorans from a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service dention facility in Texas, ruling that the detainees have been denied access to telephones and lawyers in order to apply for political asylum in this country.

In a ruling issued Friday, U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon held that INS officials were in violation of an April, 1988, order he authored requiring the agency to provide help for Salvadorans seeking political asylum.

Civil rights attorneys had argued that immigration officials routinely deported thousands of Salvadorans to their homeland without advising them of their rights.

Although INS officials assured Kenyon that all Salvadorans at the INS center in Port Isabel were advised of the right to apply for political asylum, the judge held otherwise.

“Out of a group of 67 Salvadorans deported from Port Isabel on April 20, none were represented by counsel at their deportation hearings,” the judge said in his ruling. “The court finds it difficult to believe that each of these individuals learned of knowingly and effectively waived his or her right to counsel.”

Kenyon’s order remains in effect until a May 30 hearing on the matter.