INS Reneged on Permits, Group Says

An immigrants’ rights group accused federal immigration officials Monday of backing away from a promise to give work permits to the illegal immigrants whose wild truck ride while fleeing authorities ended in a videotaped beating by Riverside County deputies.

“My understanding was that they would be released, that they would be granted voluntary departure and that there would be work authorizations,” said Niels Frenzen, board president of CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles.

Frenzen said that agreement was reached last Tuesday when the immigrants were still in custody during a meeting attended by Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner Doris Meissner, INS regional director Gus De La Vina and Los Angeles district director Richard K. Rogers.

Frenzen, an attorney with Public Counsel, said immigration officials repeated that they would issue work permits for this group of illegal immigrants, just as they had for a group of Thai workers who were found laboring as virtual slaves in a garment manufacturer’s sweatshop.

He said he later spoke to an official in the immigration service’s Los Angeles office about processing the work authorizations.

Rogers said Monday that all 19 of the immigrants may be given work permits, but only if they are needed as material witnesses in investigations of the incident. The immigrants have been granted permission to remain in the country for six months. But without the additional work permits, they could not legally seek employment.

Authorities won’t know who is necessary as witnesses, he said, until investigators determine what crimes were committed.

The immigrants were packed in a rickety pickup truck that led authorities on a high-speed chase for 80 miles from Temecula to South El Monte where the truck came to a halt. The truck’s occupants scattered, but most were quickly taken into custody. Television news crews aboard helicopters videotaped two deputies clubbing two of the occupants--including a woman.