Court Rejects Case of Writer Who Renounced Citizenship

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear the case of author Margaret Randall, who renounced her U.S. citizenship in 1967 when living in Mexico and is fighting in court to regain it.

“Of course I’m disappointed,” Randall said of the court’s opinion. “But eventually we will win because there are many people in this country who believe in freedom of speech. It is part of our culture as Americans.”

Randall’s fight to regain her citizenship has been tied up in immigration courts since 1985, when Al Giugni, the Immigration and Naturalization Service director in El Paso, Tex., ruled that she could be deported because of her communist-leaning writings.

The Supreme Court rejected Randall’s appeal to hear her case on the aspect of its constitutionality only. Her lawyers were arguing that the real issue is not whether the author and photographer could remain legally in the United States but whether there is freedom of speech in the United States.

Randall, 52, was born in New York City, moved to Mexico in 1961 and married a Mexican national. She said she renounced her American citizenship in 1967 in order to get a job in Mexico.

The former faculty member of the University of New Mexico and author of more than 40 books moved from Mexico to Cuba, where she lived for 11 years, gaining an international reputation as an advocate of women’s rights in the Third World.

Randall moved from Cuba to Nicaragua in 1981 to write about women in that country. In 1984, she returned to Albuquerque on a vistor’s visa to be with her elderly parents.