ROUNDUP ON THE RIO GRANDE
Juffer, Jane
Roundup on the Rio Grande BY JANE JUFFER It has never been easy for a Central American entering the United States in southern Texas to pursue a claim to political asylum. But as of February 21,...
...With the new policy, the INS has received funding to increase detention-center capacity from about 500 to 3,000...
...For the last three years, local governments have virtually ignored the fact that INS policy has stranded up to 5,000 refugees at a time in the Valley, the poorest area in the whole country...
...Until recently, the Valley has also been shielded from the national news media...
...But as of February 21, the task became impossible—unless the claim is pursued from behind the barbed-wire fences of the Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center...
...The resulting high rate of asylum approval for Nicaraguans (84 per cent in 1987, 53 per cent in 1988) contributed as much to the influx from that country as the deteriorating Nicaraguan economy...
...Faced with the flood of applications, the INS decided last December that its policy of allowing refugees to travel after filing a claim was acting as a drawing card, so it prohibited these refugees from leaving the Valley...
...11 In the fall of 1987, the Harlingen INS began to accept affirmative asylums—but only because then-Attorney General Edwin Meese had issued a public directive urging INS offices to give special treatment to Nicaraguans fleeing the "communist regime...
...Flynn, one of two lawyers with Proyecto Libertad...
...Those denied asylum are immediately incarcerated and held for deportation...
...pro-bono aid is extremely rare...
...At the top of the Valley sits the huge King Ranch, its miles of rough terrain a formidable deterrent to anyone who tries to skirt Border Patrol checkpoints on foot...
...All Central Americans who file "invalid claims" for asylum are now immediately arrested and detained...
...local officials petitioned the Federal Government for assistance...
...Word travels fast in refugee circles...
...within two years, the bond had risen to $3,000...
...Traditionally, local officials have worked hand-in-hand with Border Patrol and INS officials to control the "illegal alien" problem...
...The unwelcome publicity that erupted at the height of the winter tourist season, combined with the local resentment of INS policies and pressure from refugee advocates, raised the possibility that the INS might be forced to stop treating the Valley as its private testing ground...
...For the past decade, the INS has taken advantage of the HORACIO FIDEL CARDO isolation to enforce such policies as these: H In the early 1980s, the Valley INS office responded to the rising number of asylum applications by virtually shutting down its office for those claimants...
...On the first day of the new policy, 233 claims were heard and only two refugees, both Nicaraguans, received asylum...
...For three years, the INS has Jane Juffer, an associate editor of Pacific News Service, wrote "Abuse at the Border " for the April 1988 issue of The Progressive...
...Previously, refugees applied for asylum at an office building in Harlingen...
...Having ignored this population of asylum seekers for years, the INS office was unprepared for the flood of applicants—28,000 between May 30 and December 15...
...One of his brothers disappeared last year and another in 1981...
...They may even be arrested by the Border Patrol on their way to turn themselves in, but upon denial of their claim they are arrested anyway...
...Now these people, too, will be removed from the streets...
...Also, DNI tortured a friend of the woman with electric shock...
...U A Guatemalan Indian from the violence-ridden region of Quiche...
...Local residents are pleased that the "eyesore" has been moved from the streets to the scrubland...
...It could have conceded that people were coming here for good reason and given them refuge, or it could have slammed the door in people's faces...
...within about a year, these refugees could not leave the Valley without paying a $1,000 bond...
...The INS crowed about the Act's success in 1987, when the number of Border Patrol arrests fell, but now, in the midst of increasing refugee entries, hardly a word is heard about that law...
...Refugees whose claims are denied may bring them before an immigration judge in a courtroom, but unless they can raise the bond money they are likely to spend months—perhaps years—behind bars...
...been using the entire lower Rio Grande Valley as a de-facto detention center for refugees apprehended but released on their own recognizance and not allowed to travel outside the Valley...
...K A Honduran woman whose brother was an activist in a union of electrical workers...
...It's an extremely inhumane policy which is not going to discourage people from fleeing Central America and coming to the United States," says Jonathan Moore, who works with Pro-yecto Libertad, the only nonprofit refugee legal-aid group in the Valley...
...Refugee advocates sued to allow the refugees to travel, and Federal District Judge Filemon Vela granted a temporary restraining order on the INS policy which allowed refugees to travel until February 20, when the INS would again be able to restrict refugees to the Valley...
...Gradually, the number of homeless refugees awaiting INS decisions on their cases has increased, and in December, when the agency forced yet another group of refugees to remain in the Valley, the numbers grew to the thousands...
...The INS claims it could hold up to 5,000, using contracted facilities, county jails, and other detention centers in the Southwest...
...The woman saw DNI shoot a young man and plant a gun on him...
...Only two highways lead north, and both are heavily guarded by Border Patrol agents...
...Aside from Proyecto, only a handful of Valley attorneys provide legal assistance to refugees...
...Who are these people whose claims are being deemed invalid by the INS...
...According to Proyecto paralegals who interviewed some of the refugees on the first day of the new policy, those denied on the spot included: 11A Salvadoran man whose brother was dragged from their home by a group of armed men...
...If refugees were arrested when the detention center was full, the INS released them on their own recognizance but prohibited them from leaving the seven-county Valley unless they could post a $3,000 bond...
...Some Valley residents tried to provide food and clothing...
...The rest were detained on bonds of at least $4,000...
...While Proyecto lawyers will represent these individuals and others at their eventual asylum hearings in court, many more will go unrepresented...
...The men, whom the Salvadoran believes to have been guerrillas, threatened him before killing the brother, cutting off his head, and mounting it on a stake outside the house...
...The prospect of months in prison will cause more refugees to accept deportation orders, says E.J...
...All this happens in one day at the INS detention center, twenty-five miles from the nearest Valley city of any size...
...Refugee advocates in the Valley doubt that the latest warning sent South will be any more effective...
...They are forcing people with strong [asylum] claims into an unwinnable dilemma...
...Before the policy was enacted, refugees seeking asylum entered their claim at the INS office in Harlingen and often received permission to travel...
...With the Gulf of Mexico to the east and the Mexican border running diagonally to the west, the Valley is cut off from the rest of the United States like a slice of pie...
...Under the new asylum procedure, refugees must submit their claims to an INS adjudicator and await the decision...
...In the first week of the new policy, the number of applications dropped from 233 the first day to about eighty the next three days combined...
...The new policy sends a soothing message to local residents, who in the past four months have been increasingly resentful of INS policies...
...By then the INS was ready with a policy that mollified local residents and gave it the excuse to shut its doors again on refugees who wish to report to its office to seek asylum...
...Local governments could not ignore the fact that INS policy was turning the .Valley into a holding pen and demanded that the INS take responsibility for getting the refugees off the streets and out of the abandoned homes and hotels...
...In recent months, hundreds of refugees camped out around the building in an effort to obtain the interviews that would, at least, result in permission to travel...
...Harlingen city officials finally evicted the INS for violating sanitation regulations...
...Of all those, only three—all Nicaraguans—received asylum...
...Limited refugee-shelter space quickly filled up...
...Refugees who want to enter their asylum claims must walk or hitchhike through isolated countryside to arrive at the detention center...
...Previously, many were allowed to initiate paperwork in the Rio Grande Valley, then join families and support systems elsewhere in the United States to await their hearings...
...The new policy is intended to be a "strong signal" to people who file "frivolous asylum claims" with the idea of staying in the United States, INS Commissioner Alan C. Nelson said...
...Her brother has been forced to go into hiding because DNI, the Honduran investigative police, came to their house looking for him...
...That made it much easier for them to pursue asylum in court, and though many claims were eventually denied, the refugees gained a one- or two-year reprieve from the war zone and perhaps earned some wages...
...It's only going to discourage people from presenting themselves to the immigration service...
...But such signals won't work so long as U.S.-funded wars continue to destroy economies and lives in Central America...
...Proof of that is the failure of the vaunted 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which was intended to cut off the flow of "illegal aliens" by fining employers who hired them...
...The influx is understandable, given the troubles in Central America, but it does not warrant increased militarization of the border...
...The new policy is another step toward the complete isolation of the Rio Grande Valley...
...Escape from the Valley has been made more difficult with the addition of 269 Border Patrol officers, almost doubling the previous force...
...It chose the latter option...
...K In 1985, the INS began to restrict those refugees released on their own recognizance...
...Virtually all claims will be denied...
...thousands of refugees were forced onto the streets, into makeshift tents and abandoned hotels...
...The United States had two options...
...The new policy is a total gutting of our respect for the asylum process and international law," says Flynn, the Proyecto attorney...
...It Finally, in the spring of 1988, the office also began to accept non-Nicaraguan claims...
...Harlingen is the only INS district in the country to have had such a policy...
...Central Americans who tried to apply for asylum were either shooed away or arrested and detained...
Vol. 53 • April 1989 • No. 4
