Immigration detainees in legal quagmire

 Cubans face indefinite incarceration due to tough laws, rocky relations

 ANDRES VIGLUCCI

 Like several thousand other immigration detainees across the country, the Cuban
 ex-convicts who are holding hostages in a Louisiana jail have finished serving their
 prison sentences. Were they U.S. citizens, they would now be in halfway houses
 or out on the street, free men.

 Because they are not, they instead face what amounts to indefinite incarceration
 by the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- a quirk of tough, and some say
 unduly harsh, immigration laws, and unfriendly relations between the United
 States and Cuba.

 In a nutshell, those laws require the detention and deportation of noncitizens
 convicted of a wide range of crimes. But Cuba and other countries with strained
 relations with the United States -- most prominently Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam
 -- refuse for the most part to accept U.S. deportees.

 That leaves the INS two options: Release the ex-convicts, or hold them until their
 homelands change their minds about taking them.

 In most cases, INS numbers suggest, the agency chooses the latter, denying
 release to any detainees judged to pose some risk to public safety.

 The dilemma of indefinite detention, once largely restricted to Cubans, has
 bedeviled the government, advocates, the detainees and their families since the
 Mariel boatlift brought thousands of hardened criminals to Florida. It has prompted
 unfruitful lawsuits, two fiery prison takeovers in 1987 and numerous hunger
 strikes.

 RELEASE VALVE

 A 1984 accord with Cuba created a release valve. The Castro regime agreed to
 take back as many as 2,746 Mariel detainees named in the agreement; 1,425
 have been sent back so far. An INS release program tailored to Mariel detainees,
 meanwhile, has led to some 6,000 being freed.

 But a controversial immigration-law reform passed by Congress in 1996 once
 again turned indefinite detention into an acute issue.

 Though immigration law long required the deportation of criminal aliens, the '96
 reforms substantially broadened the definition of a deportable offense to include
 many relatively minor offenses -- no matter how long ago they occurred.

 The law also removed outside court review of INS decisions in those cases,
 largely eliminating the right detainees previously enjoyed to persuade an
 immigration judge that they did not deserve deportation.

 As a result, the number of people in INS detention has exploded, from about
 8,000 to around 16,000, forcing the agency to rely on a network of local lockups
 around the country to hold them.

 Federal courts in other parts of the country have ruled indefinite detention to be
 unconstitutional, but the rulings apply only in limited jurisdictions.

 MORE CASE REVIEWS

 Since a well-publicized hunger strike by the parents of six Cuban detainees
 outside the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade focused national
 attention on the issue, the INS has instituted twice-yearly reviews of the cases of
 such long-term detainees for possible release.

 In Florida, though, only about a third of some 400 detainees whose cases have
 been reviewed have been approved for release, said INS spokeswoman Maria
 Elena Garcia. In the INS Eastern Region, which comprises Florida, Louisiana and
 23 other states, just 379 of 1,184 cases reviewed have resulted in releases.

 That leaves the agency to contend with a growing number of ``undeportable
 aliens'' in custody. The precise number could not be determined Wednesday. But
 in the INS Eastern Region, the agency is now holding 1,344 long-term detainees.
 Across the country, about 2,400 Cuban ex-offenders are in INS detention, the
 largest single national group.

 To the INS, its review policy strikes a fair balance between public safety and
 fairness.

 ``They really do get a chance every six months,'' said Michael Gilhooly, a
 spokesman for the INS Eastern Region office in Vermont. ``The numbers show
 that people are being released when they're not a threat.''

 RIGHTS ISSUE

 But to advocates, their continued incarceration is not only a violation of due
 process rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, but a potential tinderbox.

 ``We've been saying a long time that the way INS has been handling these cases
 is a recipe for disaster,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida
 Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. ``Some of our clients have been in INS
 detention longer than they were in jail for the underlying crime. We can't just lock
 them up forever.''

 Little and other advocates contend the INS could be releasing far more long-term
 detainees. But they say its release program has been wildly inconsistent, with
 often bewildering decisions and unclear standards that seem to vary by location.

 Some INS districts have yet to institute reviews because the agency has not
 published regulations governing the program, said Kevin Appleby, director of
 migration and refugee policy for the U.S. Catholic Conference.