California IN BRIEF : ANAHEIM : INS Hearing Center Move Draws Fire

An official of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and immigrants rights groups traded charges over a lawsuit attempting to force the INS to maintain an asylum office in downtown Los Angeles. When the asylum office moved to Laguna Niguel, about 50% of asylum seekers missed their appointments, said Duke Austin, an INS spokesman in Washington. “But when we were in Los Angeles, the percentage was (only) a couple points higher,” he said. Madeline Janis, executive director of the Central American Refugee Center, countered: “The (asylum seekers) are an impoverished group of people, most of whom don’t speak English, and your asking them to be at a 9 a.m. meeting, which requires a two- or three-hour bus ride. You are also asking their attorneys, who are working (for free), to give up at least four or five hours of their time to go to Orange County for a hearing.”