El Centro
About two dozen Salvadorans awaiting deportation at the El Centro detention center staged a short-lived hunger strike to urge immigration officials to send them home, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said Wednesday.
The detainees, who officials said were all convicted felons, stopped eating their meals Tuesday afternoon, INS spokesman Rudy Murillo said. But most of them ended the strike Wednesday night after authorities agreed to book them flights to San Salvador on a Salvadoran airline.
American air carriers, which normally transport deportees for the INS, stopped flying into San Salvador after recent heavy fighting closed the airport.
Two of the hunger strikers wanted to stay in the United States, and had applied for political asylum, but both were rejected. All of the detainees will be flown to El Salvador by Friday, Murillo said.
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