Big Corral--End of Line for Many Aliens : Immigration: The South Texas facility houses illegal border crossers, primarily from the ‘Central American Triangle.’

Some of the aliens arrive in downtown Brownsville dripping wet, testimony to wading across the Rio Grande, the border between the United States and Mexico. It is the last leg on their journey north from Central America.

A few of the immigrants manage to slip past the Border Patrol, but large numbers are arrested and trucked to the Port Isabel Service Processing Center here, less than an hour’s ride from the river, without the slightest idea of the frustrating legal maze they are about to enter.

For many, it has been an arduous trip, and the big detention center--run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service--is their first glimpse of America.

Most of the immigrants who have illegally entered South Texas in recent years are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, driven north by civil strife and poor economic conditions. So many poured across the Rio Grande during the last two years--estimates range to 60,000 and more--that the region has been dubbed the “Central American Triangle.”

Many ask for political asylum to remain in the United States and their cases, for a time, swelled the dockets of the Immigration Court complex just outside the Port Isabel compound, which refugees call El Corralon, or the Big Corral.

The detention center straddles farm fields northeast of Brownsville, not far from picturesque Padre Island. Run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the 400-acre compound is surrounded by high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. It could hold 10,000 or more aliens, if needed.

Invariably, those aliens hauled to the Big Corral have no cash for attorneys and few--if any--relatives to turn to for financial help. Without a lawyer, their chances of gaining asylum are practically nil. Indeed, as the aliens soon discover, there are only a handful of immigration lawyers in all of South Texas who could represent them if they had time.

Critics say that nowhere in the country is the need for immigration lawyers so acute as it is here.

“Lawyers can’t stand the frustration of dealing with the bureaucracy,” said Brownsville attorney Linda Yanez, one of the area’s best known immigration lawyers.

In all of predominantly rural Cameron County, which takes in the lower Rio Grande Valley, there are about 300 lawyers--but perhaps only a dozen who make a living practicing immigration law. And almost none, Yanez said, does pro bono, or free, work.

Therefore, for the vast majority of immigrants who cannot afford bail, they must remain behind the detention center’s barbed wire fences without legal advice while attempting to comprehend a complex court system.

Under the Refugee Act of 1980, aliens can apply for political asylum even though they entered the United States illegally. To clear this hurdle, they need to convince an immigration judge they have suffered persecution at home or have “a well-founded fear of persecution” and that they are not in the United States mainly for economic reasons. About four out of five such claims are rejected--even when an alien is fortunate enough to find a lawyer.

What’s more, some critics of U.S. immigration policy have attacked the INS for using facilities like Port Isabel.

“Such interdiction and detention programs are inhumane deterrence measures which are incompatible with the purposes of the Refugee Act of 1980,” stated a report by the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, a refugee and human rights watchdog group.

But the INS point man in South Texas until he recently retired, District Director Omer G. Sewell, believes the threat of imprisonment has been a major factor in curbing the influx of Central Americans in recent months.

“Detention seems to be a crucial part of enforcement to deal with this kind of problem,” said Sewell, a former assistant INS district director in Los Angeles. “Without detention, nothing else seems to work.”

To underscore his conclusion, Sewell cited figures showing that Port Isabel held as many as 2,700 illegal immigrants at one time last year, but the number has recently dropped to about 500.

Sewell’s replacement, E.M. Trominski, agreed with Sewell’s assessment.

“There’s always going to be an illegal immigration problem,” he said. “Port Isabel does send a message: If you’re entering the U.S. illegally, we are going to apprehend you, put you through a deportation proceeding and return you to your home country.”

In December, 1988, so many Central Americans were crossing the border that local communities and social services were overwhelmed. Men, women and children were sleeping in vermin-infested hotels or in farm fields.

The following February, federal officials beefed up the Border Patrol and vastly expanded Port Isabel’s facilities. Temporary tents were raised and higher bail was set for the aliens.

“And the word got back,” said Sewell. “The final line was that you’re not going to get through anymore. You’re going to be detained. We’re going to keep you here until you finally stop coming.”

Today, the tide has ebbed, but Port Isabel is still the end of the line for many captured aliens. Here, security guards patrol the grounds; inmates cannot walk from one area to another without sentries unlocking gates. Inside are some pay telephones and a small library where aliens can research the arcane laws under which they were arrested. They sleep in barrack-like buildings.

Each day, aliens dressed in bright orange jumpsuits march into Port Isabel’s immigration courtrooms about two dozen at a time. A master calendar hearing, similar to a criminal arraignment, is held every weekday morning.

A prosecutor employed by the INS sits at a table piled high with files. The day a reporter visited the courtroom none of the inmates had attorneys, so no one sat at a table reserved for immigration lawyers.

The detention center has six permanent judges, plus two visiting jurists. They work in three courtrooms in a concrete block building and an adjacent mobile home. Some of them also work in immigration courtrooms in nearby Harlingen.

During one recent hearing, visiting Immigration Judge Susan Yarbrough of Houston distributed a sheet offering free legal services. “Your most important right is the right to be represented by an attorney,” she said.

However, The Times found that the list compiled by the INS provides scant legal help.

Ten telephone numbers representing four legal groups were listed on the handout given the aliens. The first two numbers were for the privately supported South Texas Immigration Council, which has offices in Harlingen and Brownsville.

But the council’s director, Benigno Pena, said his group has no lawyers.

The next five numbers belonged to the federally funded Texas Rural Legal Aid Inc. with offices in Brownsville, Edinburg, Weslaco, Harlingen and Rio Grande City. The nonprofit agency does virtually no legal work for aliens in prison, said the group’s director, David Hall.

The eighth number, the only one with a toll-free line, was Lawyer Referral Service of the State Bar of Texas. “We do not offer free legal services,” said Dorothy Guderian, the group’s supervisor.

The last two phone numbers were for the privately funded Casa del Proyecto Libertad (House of Project Liberty) in Harlingen. This group does take on a limited number of political asylum cases and counsels Salvadorans on their legal rights. It has one full-time staff attorney, two part-time lawyers and five paralegals. “We get 25 calls a day” from immigrants asking for help, said one of its paralegals, Lea Felker.

A Port Isabel inmate from Nigeria told The Times he attempted to dial the numbers on the INS handout from one of the prison’s public telephones and was given such a runaround that “I just got fed up.”

INS official Trominski said he thinks the legal aid list has redeeming value in that it offers the prospect of legal help even if lawyers aren’t available to provide free advice.

“An organization doesn’t need to be chock full of licensed attorneys to provide help,” he said. “Paralegals are generally quite professional and quite well qualified. Whether they’re willing to come out and talk to anyone who calls (from Port Isabel), I can’t answer that. We provide the space and access.”

Last May, a group of Texas lawyers with little experience in immigration law visited the Port Isabel center to try their hand in Immigration Court. After taking a crash course in immigration law, they randomly selected six Central Americans who were seeking asylum and proceeded to win five of the cases.

“Without a lawyer, their chances would have been zilch,” said Juan Eliseo Sauseda, 34, an Amarillo lawyer who successfully defended two cousins from Guatemala before an immigration judge who was considered one of the toughest at Port Isabel.

“Next to my child being born, I’ve never experienced such a moment of elation,” Sauseda said.

“The (aliens) have no idea how the system works,” he added. “It’s so unfair. If the legal profession is worth a damn, every attorney in this state ought to do at least one of those cases.”