Activists Argue Against Deportation of Salvadorans : Refugees: They say lives would be in danger even though civil war is over. Aim is to prod Clinton Administration to take action.

Although El Salvador’s bloody civil war is over, mass deportations of Salvadorans in the United States would undermine a delicate peace and subject returning expatriates to hardship and danger, activists said Tuesday.

Activists--including two Los Angeles-area congressional representatives and an official of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles--delivered their message during a news conference outside the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.

“Given the current situation, the deportation of Salvadorans to El Salvador would endanger their lives,” said U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles).

The gathering was part of a campaign aimed at prodding the Clinton Administration to take several domestic and foreign-policy actions: Extend lawful U.S. residency status for tens of thousands of expatriate Salvadorans; pressure San Salvador’s rightist leaders to bring human rights violators to justice, and declassify documents detailing Washington’s connections to the Salvadoran military and allied death squads during the nation’s 12-year civil war.

Authorities have not decided whether to extend legal residency to affected Salvadorans, said Verne Jervis, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Whatever the decision, Jervis added, there is little chance of immediate mass deportations of Salvadorans, many of whom are protected by political asylum claims.

In arguing against forced repatriations, participants called on the new Administration to extend for 18 months the temporary residency status of many Salvadorans working in the United States. The temporary “safe haven” residency status is scheduled to expire June 30.

Forcible returns, said U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Montebello) “would only serve to break El Salvador’s present fragile equilibrium.”

Many Salvadorans would remain as illegal immigrants, the congressman said.

Adding urgency to the argument, activists said, is the Salvadoran government’s decision last month to grant blanket amnesty to human rights violators named in a watershed report by the United Nations-appointed Commission on Truth.

The panel attributed most wartime atrocities--including massacres of civilians--to the Salvadoran military, which was bankrolled by U.S. tax dollars. The amnesty, the activists argued, means that killers continue to operate with impunity.

“The war is over, but there is no security for anyone in El Salvador,” said Judith Amaya, a former student who says she fled her homeland in 1990, fearing for her life, and now faces the prospect of forced return.

The war caused as many as one in five Salvadorans to flee the nation of 5 million people, experts say.

Beyond the dangers in their homeland, activists cite other reasons for seeking extension of Salvadorans’ legal status. Many immigrants have established roots here, including children born and reared in the United States. Furthermore, activists say, refugees’ continued remittances to relatives in El Salvador constitute an economic linchpin for the Central American nation.