Deportation of Mexican Assassin’s Relatives Suspended : Residency: Family of Mario Aburto Martinez had hoped to use hearing to air theory that his arrest was part of cover-up in slaying of presidential candidate Colosio.

A U.S. immigration judge suspended deportation proceedings Friday against the mother and several other relatives of Mario Aburto Martinez, the former Tijuana factory hand convicted last year of killing Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

However, attorneys for the family charged that the suspension was premature and part of a cover-up in Colosio’s murder case.

Colosio was gunned down after a campaign rally in Tijuana in March, 1994. Aburto is serving a 45-year prison term for the murder, which is a continuing source of controversy in Mexico. Family members had hoped the deportation hearing would allow them to air their theory about an alleged conspiracy in the Colosio case.

“It is clear that the U.S. government did not want to put Mexico’s handling of the Colosio assassination on trial,” said Peter A. Schey, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which is assisting the Aburto family and has vowed to expose an alleged cover-up in the official Mexican investigation.

Margaret Reichenberg, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service attorney handling the case, declined to comment.

However, Schey said the government attorney requested the suspension so that the convicted assassin’s father, Ruben Aburto Sr., a longtime resident of San Pedro, could apply for U.S. citizenship. Once a citizen, Aburto Sr. has the right to petition the government to allow his wife and three children to remain in the United States legally. Immigration Judge Nathan Gordon acceded to the government request, putting off the deportation case until December.

The convicted assassin’s family says Aburto is a fall guy in a broad conspiracy to murder Colosio, possibly involving drug traffickers and high officials of Mexico’s long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI.

Mexican authorities say the investigation is still open and officials recently arrested a second alleged gunman.

Appearing Friday in U.S. immigration court in Downtown Los Angeles to fight deportation were Aburto’s mother, two younger sisters, a younger brother, the brother’s girlfriend and the couple’s 2-year-old child. All fled to the United States in May, contending that their lives were in jeopardy in Mexico. They alleged harassment by Mexican authorities investigating the Colosio murder.

The six have applied for political asylum, which may be granted to those showing a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands. Asylum applications by Mexican nationals seldom are successful.

A State Department report on the case, Schey said, found that the family’s allegations of harassment are not inconsistent with reports of human rights violations in Mexico.