Hope seen for thousands of INS detainees

Tuesday, April 11, 2000 | 10:43 a.m.

In the wake of a federal appellate court ruling that immigration officials cannot hold criminal immigrants indefinitely, the federal public defender's office in Las Vegas says it will move for the immediate release of 120 such local detainees.

"We will be asking for emergency consideration possibly by the end of this week or early next week," said Franny Forsman, the federal public defender in Las Vegas. "We have about 80 open cases in federal court right now."

She said the "best guess" is that there are about 120 detainees in the city jail at Stewart Avenue and Mojave Road and in the North Las Vegas jail. Many were legal aliens who committed crimes, served their jail and prison sentences and are being held because they cannot be deported to their home countries.

Forsman noted that in many of the cases, the United States cannot even attempt to repatriate the detainees because their homelands have no diplomatic ties with the United States.

Many of the aliens are from Southeast Asia -- Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam -- and Cuba.

The three-man federal panel in San Francisco made its ruling that the detainees cannot be held more than the 90 days it takes for such deportations when there is no hope they can be sent back.

Forsman and others agree that the next step for the Immigration and Naturalization Service is to appeal the panel's decision. The case is expected to eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court for a final decision.

Monday's unanimous ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel of Judges Stephen Reinhardt, David Thompson and Thomas Nelson, on an appeals case from Seattle, affects hundreds of immigrants in the nine Western states covered by the nation's largest appellate circuit.

It is estimated that as many as 3,500 aliens are being held in jails throughout the United States with no charges pending. Forsman said that some of the Las Vegas area detainees have spent at least three years in jail after serving sentences for the felony crimes they were found guilty of committing.

"It's heartbreaking," she said. "These people feel so isolated. Even a person who has a 20-year prison sentence knows that one day they will be freed.

"These people have no concept of when they will be freed, and they are spending that time in facilities that are not designed for long-term stays."

Forsman said the United States was not founded on such incarcerations and that Americans are often quick to criticize other nations for inhumane treatment of people, including keeping them locked up with no charges.

"We may even be in violation of international treaties that prohibit inhumane conduct," she said.

For the most part, the detainees are being held under a 1996 law that greatly expands the types of crimes that required deportation. The INS contends it can keep such people in jail, potentially for life, if it considers them dangerous.

The agency cited a provision of the 1996 law that says that immigrants who cannot be deported within 90 days "may be detained beyond the removal period."

The appeals panel ruled that the 1996 law did not support the INS position.

Reinhardt, who wrote the recent opinion, said: "In the simplest terms, to say that the INS may hold persons beyond a particular date does not answer the question 'for how long.' "

During a recent hearing, Reinhardt asked INS attorneys how long they felt the detainees could be held.

The hearing came about after a federal judge in Seattle ruled that indefinite detention without charges was unconstitutional. The court ruled in the case of Kim Ho Ma, a Cambodian refugee who came to the United States with his family at age 2 and was convicted of manslaughter in a drive-by shooting 15 years later.

He served two years in state prison and spent nearly three more years in the custody of the INS, which said he was still dangerous. Ma challenged the INS policy and was released last September by U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik.

Reinhardt said immigrants must be released 90 days after a final deportation order and allowed to remain free under close INS supervision until their home country reaches an agreement with the United States to accept deportees.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.