New Immigration Law Spreads Confusion

A sweeping immigration law designed to shore up the nation’s borders and expedite deportations took effect here Tuesday at 35 minutes past midnight after judges, lawyers and advocates battled into the night over its implementation.

In Los Angeles and elsewhere, immigrants awoke baffled and scared as rumors of mass deportation swirled in their circles.

“Fear and confusion are sweeping through immigrant and refugee communities,” said Soya Jung of the Alliance for Immigrant and Refugee Justice in Washington state. “This is the harshest piece of immigration legislation our nation has seen in more than 50 years. It’s an unjust law, and we can’t take it lying down.”

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said the statute is being phased in as planned, and tried to reassure illegal immigrants that it would cause no mass deportations or workplace roundups, as many have dreaded.

“There is absolutely no truth to the rumor and falsehood that the INS has planned and defined massive deportation proceedings,” said INS spokesman Brian Jordan. “This is going to be a gradual process. It’s going to take time.”

The most sweeping overhaul of its kind in a decade, the law paves the way for physical barriers at the borders--including a triple fence in San Diego--more Border Patrol staff, better INS equipment and an accelerated deportation process that limits the legal challenges an immigrant can make.

For a few hours late Monday, it appeared the law would be delayed after a federal judge in Washington held that the government had failed to give adequate notice of the impending crackdown. But seven hours later, his order was reversed by an emergency panel of judges summoned by the U.S. Justice Department. The on-again, off-again rulings further muddled an already confusing situation.

The unexpected news that the new law had gone into effect Tuesday sent some panicked immigrants scurrying to INS offices in downtown Los Angeles looking for answers. Few got them.

Clutching a Spanish-language newspaper with a banner headline that the law had been delayed, Gonzalo Aguilar, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, joined others in an already long line at the Federal Building. “Who knows what’s going on?” Aguilar, 34, said in Spanish. “First they say it’s delayed. Then the radio says it’s the law.”

He questioned others in line--there to replace lost residency cards or to apply for relatives to come to the United States--but they knew nothing. INS officials could not offer immediate help or answers either.

When the long line failed to move for 30 minutes, Aguilar hurried off. “This isn’t right,” he called out.

The reaction was much the same at an Echo Park hardware store favored by day laborers seeking work.

“It’s just like trying to find work,” said Marcos Fierro, 24, who arrived illegally from Mexico three months ago. “A man will say he can give you work for three weeks and then change his mind and you work only three days. The government can’t say one thing one day and another the next. Who can live like that?”

The new law has been the subject of debate since Congress passed it handily last fall. So it was no surprise that both sides battled to the finish Monday over its implementation.

April 1 had come to be regarded as a dire deadline for illegal immigrants who feared mass roundups. Advocates from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups raced to Washington last week in an attempt to block the measure.

It seemed they had succeeded Monday when U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the federal government had not allowed 30 days to pass since the new regulations were published in the Federal Register last month. The judge delayed implementation till Saturday.

Although four days seemed like a small victory to many, it was viewed as a valuable window for immigration rights advocates to use to educate their communities and organize legal challenges to at least some of the law’s provisions.

“Fallo Aplaza Ley Migratoria,” blared a banner headline in Tuesday morning’s La Opinion--”Ruling Delays Immigration Law.” The same news was carried in every major newspaper in the country. But the issue had been far from settled.

Attorneys for the government, arguing that a delay would set off law enforcement chaos, filed a late-evening emergency plea with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The ACLU lawyers ordered in pizza and drafted their response. After a flurry of faxes that ended at 11 p.m. in the East, each side waited in their respective Washington offices for word.

“At 12:15 a.m. we broke out the beer and scotch,” said ACLU attorney Judy Rabinovitz. “At 12:35 we got the news.”

The judge’s order had delayed the law just 35 minutes, a blow to the immigrants’ side but cause for celebration among the law’s supporters.

“That’s democracy in action,” Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), a strong proponent of the new law, said Tuesday. “It’s encouraging [that a panel of judges] came forth at a higher level who could see what justice is all about.”

Still, the battle over implementation of the new law is hardly over. Immigrant rights attorneys were back in court Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order against INS agents who interview asylum seekers at the nation’s airports. The law currently holds that INS agents must inform those immigrants of their rights to consult family or legal counsel.

“We’re saying, ‘INS, before you send them back to persecution and death, can you at least inform them of their rights?’ ” said Robert Rubin of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. “If they are unable to articulate immediately their fear of persecution, they will be sent back. The INS wants to keep individuals in the dark. That’s wrong. It goes against the fundamental rights of our society.”

Times staff writers George Ramos in Los Angeles and Marc Lacey and Heather Knight in Washington contributed to this story.