12378: U.S. panel to press Bush (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

U.S. panel to press Bush

By Jody A. Benjamin
Staff Writer
Posted June 22 2002

MIAMI · After hearing two hours of testimony and touring a county jail
housing Haitian refugees, members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
resolved Friday to step up pressure on the Bush administration to change a
federal policy that many say discriminates against Haitians.

The bipartisan and controversial commission has no enforcement power. But
chair Mary Frances Berry said the body would further investigate how the
Haitian policy was developed and how it might be changed.

"It's a very tragic situation," said Berry. The asylum-seeking Haitians "are
being treated as prisoners, but they haven't committed any crime."

"We don't have enforcement powers but we can shine a national spotlight on
this issue," she said. "We can ask: Who made this policy and who can change
it?"

Members of the commission took up the issue at the invitation of local
immigrant advocates who for months have been struggling to help the
Haitians, most of whom arrived aboard an overcrowded boat on Dec. 3. INS is
now detaining about 200 Haitians at facilities in South Florida.

Federal officials did not speak at the commission's morning session in
downtown Miami. But in the past they have said the policy directive, enacted
days after the boat ran aground Dec. 3 in Biscayne National Park, is aimed
at deterring other Haitians from risking their lives at sea to reach
Florida's shores.

"We had a lot of concern for any mass influx that might put a lot of
innocent lives at risk," said Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden.

Immigration lawyers told the commission it is a violation of international
law for the government to use detention to deter refugees fleeing
persecution. Others noted that INS initially misled the public about the
policy, denying there had been any change, until an admission surfaced in
court papers in a federal lawsuit.

"They hid the policy for over three months," said immigration attorney
Clarel Cyriaque. "We could have spent that time helping [the Haitians] with
their asylum claims."

But perhaps the most moving testimony came from a Haitian woman who had been
detained until May 31.

The four commissioners listened closely, some leaning forward on the dais,
to the testimony of Marie Jocelyne Ocean, who was released from the Turner
Guilford Knight Correctional Center when a judge granted her political
asylum. Ocean said she fled Haiti by boat last November after political
thugs murdered first her father, then her brother.

"When they came for me, I decided to leave my country," she said through an
interpreter.

"We did not come here because we were hungry. It was because Lavalas was
persecuting us," Ocean said, referring to the pro-government political
party. "We thought the Americans would protect us ... [but] they locked us
up."

Dressed in green and white linen and white shoes, Ocean, 29, held up a
rumpled black-and-white jailhouse photograph in which she wears an
institutional jumpsuit and a scowl.

After the testimony, commissioners traveled by bus to the jail that Ocean
once was forced to call home. There they spoke with jail and INS officials
about making minor reforms such as better food and access to phones.

Gaining the commission's sympathetic ear counts as a small victory for
immigrant advocates who, since losing a legal battle to win the Haitians'
release, have been hoping to increase political pressure on the Bush
administration to change the policy.

Earlier this week, a group of local political and business leaders vowed to
get more involved on the issue. Next month Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, is
scheduled to visit the detainees along with INS Commissioner James Ziglar.

Jody A. Benjamin can be reached at 954-356-4530 or
jbenjamin@sun-sentinel.com.




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