Refugees Pour Out Horror Tales as INS Reconsiders Asylum Bids

When Humberto Ortega went to see federal immigration authorities in Los Angeles several years ago to apply for political asylum, he decided not to show what he considered irrefutable proof of his need to stay here--a left arm mangled, he said, by Guatemalan authorities.

Ortega is still so uncomfortable about his left arm--crooked and jutting at an awkward angle--that he is hesitant about being photographed.

But he now admits he made a mistake in not emphasizing the maimed limb to Immigration and Naturalization Service examiners before they summarily rejected his asylum application after he arrived in Southern California in 1987.

The one-time university student’s story, recited in Spanish, was one of many that surfaced Thursday, the day after the U.S. government announced that the INS would reconsider an estimated 150,000 requests for political asylum from Guatemalans and Salvadorans whose cases had been turned down since 1980. The agreement will also allow applications from Salvadorans and Guatemalans who are in this country illegally but have never applied for political asylum.

Advocates of immigrants’ rights, who hailed the agreement as an important victory for refugees, said they expect a substantial portion of the 350,000 or more Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the country illegally to sign up.

“The (Guatemalan) government did this to me,” said Ortega, 29, motioning to his damaged arm. “I felt like showing off my arm (to the INS). “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t face up to showing my arm. So I just walked out.”

Critics have charged that since 1980, INS authorities routinely rejected political asylum petitions from thousands of refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador because those governments were considered friendly to the United States.

Ortega, who fled Guatemala and settled into a cramped apartment in East Hollywood, agreed with the critics as he recounted the incident that drove him from his country.

“I had just come home with my brother from a meeting where we were discussing plans to protest a particular government decision,” he recalled. “They barged in, hit my brother and then tied my hands up with wire attached to a baseball bat.

“They then twisted the bat tighter and tighter. They broke my arm and you see how it is now.”

Other refugees said that the threat of violence forced them to seek asylum in the United States.

Alva Escobar, a 24-year-old activist refugee who appeared at a Los Angeles news conference, said her days as a student in her native El Salvador were abruptly cut short by the uncertainty that engulfed her war-torn country.

Escobar, a second-year literature student at the National University in San Salvador, was active in her student union and spoke out against the government.

“I spoke my mind,” she said. “But in my country that can be a crime.”

One day when she returned home, two men were waiting for her. They threatened her, telling her they knew who she was, what she was doing. They told her she had better watch out.

For the next two months, she noticed men following her as she went to school and traveled the city in a bus. She spotted them watching her house.

“I started having nightmares,” she said. “I could not be calm.”

Escobar left El Salvador in 1988, making her way to Mexico and then crossing the U.S. border illegally. Eventually captured by the INS, she decided to seek political asylum because she felt it would be dangerous to return to her country. A hearing before an immigration judge came in October, 1988. The judge rejected her petition.

“He said that everything I said was a lie . . . that I had created a brilliant story, but that he did not believe it,” she said.

Another refugee at the news conference, Marvin Pinto, 26, a native of Guatemala, also said that U.S. authorities did not put much stock in his plea for political asylum.

“The U.S. government thinks everyone from my country is here for economic reasons,” Pinto said, “but that’s not true. All they have to do is go there and see for themselves.”

Humberto Ortega, who works at odd jobs in Los Angeles, hopes he will eventually be able to make his case here in Los Angeles.

“I hope one day to have the strength to show what happened to me,” he told a visitor. “Then, maybe, you can take my picture.”