Release of aliens from local jails sought

Wednesday, April 7, 1999 | 11:07 a.m.

The federal public defender's office in Las Vegas has filed a petition in local U.S. District Court seeking the release of people who are being detained by Immigration and Naturalization Services with no charges pending.

The detainees named in the petition filed Tuesday are among at least 150 aliens from at least six countries who are being detained in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas city jails awaiting deportation because of past crimes for which many of them have already served prison sentences, federal public defender Franny Forsman said.

However, they cannot go back to their homelands because those countries will not repatriate people convicted of felonies while they were in the United States. In some cases, the United States lacks diplomatic ties with those countries.

"What you have is these people caught in a huge, massive bureaucracy," Forsman said today. "Our clients are political prisoners not like dissidents being held in Castro's Cuba, but in the sense that they are victims of international politics."

Forsman says her office is challenging the detentions on the grounds of both U.S. constitutionality and international law that prohibits people from being detained with no criminal charges against them.

Forsman said she expects a local U.S. magistrate to rule in the next few weeks whether the INS is required to answer the petition.

The prisoners held locally are from Cuba, North Korea, Somalia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Because the U.S. has little or no diplomatic relations with those lands, it is practically impossible for the detainees to get the paperwork necessary to return to those countries, she said.