Effort Renewed to Review Files on Deportation

A federal appeals court on Friday revived efforts by thousands of immigrants in the western United States to see deportation files that were used by federal authorities to deny them legal status.

A federal judge in Arizona had ruled that he had no authority to consider the immigrants’ right to obtain the files before their legalization requests were considered. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and ordered him to decide whether they needed the information for a fair determination of their status.

The immigrants, who entered the country illegally before 1982, applied for amnesty in the late 1980s under a law offering legal residency to aliens who had lived in the United States continuously since Jan. 1, 1982, and could show good moral character. They were all turned down on the grounds that they had been deported at least once since 1982.

Immigrants in the lawsuit sought to challenge that finding but ran into a problem: The Immigration and Naturalization Service did not provide their deportation files before considering amnesty.

The class action suit, filed by 14 immigrants and the Tucson-based Proyecto San Pablo, challenged the INS’ refusal to provide the files routinely before amnesty decisions and the agency’s refusal to accept applications for waivers of the rules on post-1982 deportations.

The appeals court’s 3-0 ruling stopped short of saying whether the immigrants, and others in the same situation, were entitled to see their files before an amnesty decision. But the court said a federal judge has the authority to review such “procedural challenges to INS practices” without awaiting a deportation order.