13729: Hermantin: Miami New Times: Little Goes A Long Way (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

>From miaminewtimes.com
Originally published by Miami New Times Nov 07, 2002
©2002 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.



Little Goes A Long Way
Immigration attorney Cheryl Little spent years banging her head against INS
bureaucracy, until a Haitian boat cracked it open
By Rebecca Wakefield

Cheryl Little was halfway through a strategic meeting with her staff at the
Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) Tuesday afternoon, October 29, when
her assistant broke in with the news: A large boatload of Haitians had run
aground near Key Biscayne. People were jumping into the water, running down
the streets, trying to stop cars on the Rickenbacker Causeway. The phones
were ringing off the hook.
In the next two hours, Little worked the lines hard, took calls from the
media, and tried like hell to get out to the shut-down causeway. In
seventeen years of fighting for the rights of Haitian refugees who wash up
regularly on South Florida's shores, FIAC's executive director knew that
timing is often the difference between life and death for these people. To
be sent back could mean torture or worse at the hands of Haiti's poorly
controlled political thugs; or a slower languishing from hunger, disease,
random violence, and other "normal" conditions in the poorest nation in the
western hemisphere.

But unlike many others in years past, this precarious vessel, filled with
over 200 desperate souls, seemed to have timed its entrance into Miami --
and onto the national scene -- perfectly. It happened on a slow news
afternoon precisely one week before a gubernatorial election considered by
many to be a referendum on America's president. Television cameras swooped
in to capture the spectacle of sunburned and exhausted refugees, including
pregnant women and children, jumping, swimming, and running for their lives.
National news programs ran periodic updates on the drama, and talking heads
outside Miami boiled it all down to two main themes -- the gaping hole a
rickety Haitian boat had just torn in America's post-September 11 border,
and the inexplicably harsh policy of detention and nearly certain
deportation the Bush administration has imposed on Haitian asylum-seekers.
Much more generous interpretations of federal policies are applied to nearly
every other group of nationals who can establish a credible claim of
political persecution in their home countries. Under the U.S. government's
"wet foot/dry foot" policy, people who make it to shore can ask for asylum,
whereas those caught at sea are detained and most often deported without a
hearing. Most refugees who make it to land and pass a "credible fear"
interview are released from detention so they can meet with attorneys and
prepare their asylum cases, Little says. Cubans, thanks to the
idiosyncrasies of the Cold War, are in an even more rarefied category. They
are given automatic asylum.

Little spent two days making the rounds of talk shows and news programs,
attempting to demystify a tangled history of U.S. immigration policy toward
Haitians. Tuesday afternoon her pager blew up with calls, and her cell phone
battery died in the middle of a rather important conversation. "And I was on
the phone with Wolf Blitzer!" she recalls with a laugh. She was endlessly
recycled through the CNN mill of shows, including Connie Chung and Paula
Zahn vehicles, and became part of the NBC Nightly News broadcast with Tom
Brokaw. Wednesday morning, she was gently grilled by Good Morning America
host Charles Gibson, who opened with, "The question of the morning: Why are
there different laws for Haitians than other immigrants?" Little contended
the reason was pure and simple discrimination. "Our government claims that
they're indefinitely detaining the Haitian asylum-seekers in order to save
their lives [by discouraging dangerous sea crossings]," she said. "But I
really believe this policy is about keeping Haitians out, not about saving
their lives."

But working the media is not even half of Little's job. She was also pumping
the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Coast Guard for
information, trying to find out when, exactly, she could send teams of
attorneys in to begin representing the detainees. They need to be informed
of their rights, and the attorneys have to petition INS -- which balked at
directly paroling detainees despite the fact that most of them made it to
dry land -- for bond hearings. During one call she asked one of her
paralegals about the condition of the 28 Haitian women being held in a
Broward detention facility. "How were their spirits?" she queried, taking
notes. "Did they seem exhausted? Confused? What ages? Mostly twenties and
early thirties, okay. No English? No French? Okay. One Dominican lady. Okay,
well, we've got our work cut out for us." Little explained that most of the
women arrived with fathers or brothers, and the men (detained at the Krome
facility in south Miami-Dade) were carrying, on tiny scraps of paper, the
names and addresses of family members living in Miami -- critical
information the attorneys needed to help the women gain release.

Little had also been helping to coordinate the many demonstrations local
Haitian community leaders had been staging to pressure the Bush
administration during the narrow window before the election. They all know
that since the election is over, the attention-deficit media will begin
focusing on a crisis somewhere else, and much of the momentum for changing
the Haitian policy will be lost. In December 2001 a boat carrying 187
refugees was escorted to Miami by the Coast Guard. Twenty people jumped
overboard; two drowned and eighteen made it to shore. The rest (167) were
detained for up to ten months, during which advocates discovered the Bush
administration's secret policy of indefinitely detaining Haitians to
discourage mass migrations. Most were sent back, several dozen just four
days before the most recent boat grounding. "We've been trying to get
national attention on this for ten months now," Little observes. "We had
senators, human rights organizations, even Danny Glover. Despite all that,
we weren't making any headway. Now we've got an avalanche."

By Friday Little was in a state of controlled agitation bordering on
exhaustion. She hadn't slept much or managed to get a square meal into her
body. A fish sandwich from Burger King cooled into inedibility on her desk
as she made and took an endless stream of calls -- attorneys, advocates,
media, people who wanted to help, and those who saw her on TV and wanted to
complain about the U.S.'s lax immigration policies. "Senator Kennedy's
office, Congressman Nelson's, Alex Penelas's, and Frederica Wilson's," she
ticked off the list of important calls she hadn't had time to return: "I was
just on the phone with a partner from Holland and Knight and they've got 24
attorneys who have agreed to help with cases."

Because of the election, Democrats like Jeb Bush challenger Bill McBride
were using the Haitian crisis to hammer the Bush brothers and rally the
black Democratic base to the polls. At a McBride rally at Miami-Dade
Community College Saturday afternoon, featuring former President Bill
Clinton, several top Democrats took their shots at alleged Bush indifference
to the Haitians. State senator and soon-to-be congressman Kendrick Meek
contended that McBride is "willing to make the phone call," a reference to
earlier in the week, when Meek's mom Carrie confronted Bush at a rally and
asked him to call his brother in the White House to free the Haitians. (He
declined.) Jeb insisted he opposed the detention policy, although he had
kept quiet about it until it was exposed. Still the media and political
pressure did appear to make a difference. Friday, the Haitians were allowed
access to lawyers, a privilege not accorded to many of their compatriots
from the boat last December, according to congressional testimony last month
from Haitian advocate Wendy Young. And they will likely be allowed to apply
for a release bond.

Little doesn't see this as a weakening in administration policy, however.
She says the difference is that the December refugees had fewer legal rights
because they didn't make it to land, while the new "dry foot" group is
legally eligible for parole by INS, or bond by a judge. "INS could parole
them immediately, but they're refusing to do that," she says. "So this is
not the INS, out of the goodness of their hearts, changing a policy."

The key to making any headway on the Haitian issue will be garnering the
support of a wide coalition in Miami. Encouragingly on Friday, a gathering
of African-American, Haitian, Cuban, and Anglo mayors, commissioners, and
legislators met in county commission chambers to draft a resolution to
President Bush asking that Haitian asylum-seekers not be detained
indefinitely. They also talked about organizing a demonstration in
Washington. Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, calling the Florida Straits "the
largest cemetery in the world, because of policy," warned that advocates of
rights for Haitians should not let opponents pit them against the Cuban
Adjustment Act because they will lose natural allies. "People are going to
try to use this and try to divide and conquer us," he intoned. "We need
another adjustment act for Haitians."

As they were meeting, Little, across town, called local Cuban pilot José
Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue. She asked him to appear at a press
conference Haitian leaders were giving in Little Haiti that afternoon. He
agreed. Heading to the press conference, Little talked strategy with Dina
Paul Parks, executive director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights,
based in New York. Parks wanted to organize a national day of protest with
Haitians all over the country: "I know the folks in Miami are focused on
this election, but we can't lose that momentum. What about trying to
mobilize something on the [Washington] mall?" Little wrinkled her nose
slightly in disdain for local politics, and nodded assent: "I agree with
you. This needs to focus on Washington."

A diminutive Canadian with boundless energy and a dry wit, Little is a
curious combination of passionate advocate and cynical pragmatist. In blue
jeans and a casual red shirt dressed up with a black jacket, intense brown
eyes framed by rectangular glasses, she appeared comfortably outfitted for a
long campaign. The INS has been wishing Little would go away for quite some
time. She keeps an ironic reminder of her battles in a picture frame behind
her desk -- a newspaper quotation of a comment made about her in 1989 by
then-INS district director Perry Rivkind: "I think she should get married,
get a husband, have some children, cook for him, let him support her and
help him to contribute to society." Well, that was then.

For Little, this latest flurry of activity, while important because of the
chance to galvanize national support, is just one more skirmish in the
continuum of the U.S.'s problematic relationship with Haiti and its people.
And with balancing national security and human rights.

In 1996, after a couple of homegrown militia boys led by ex-Army grunt
Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma, legislators passed
several laws aimed at curtailing immigrant rights, ostensibly to discourage
acts of terrorism. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996, and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act allowed immigrants to be deported for a wide range of offenses,
including past crimes. As a result, the INS more than doubled the number of
immigrants held in detention facilities. The agency farms out more than half
of these to county jails. The same year, Congress passed a law making it
illegal for the federally funded Legal Services Corporation to help illegal
aliens.

To fill the gap in services, Little, then director of Florida Rural Legal
Services in Miami, started the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center the same
year on a few hundred thousand dollars in grants and with a tiny staff. They
inherited 3000 cases immediately, mostly Hispanic clients. They waded into
the seedy underworld of the scandal-plagued Krome detention center, located
just east of the Everglades in south Miami-Dade. In six years, FIAC has
grown to four offices, eighteen attorneys, seventeen paralegals, and a $2.3
million budget. Little estimates they've closed more than 30,000 cases in
six years, a phenomenal rate that underscores just how great the need is
here.

After terrorists leveled the World Trade Center last year, the situation for
immigrants got much worse. "Since September 11, I can't keep up with the
number of provisions coming down from Washington that affect our immigrant
community," Little laments, making a steeple with her fingers. "The refugee
program was practically shut down." She argues that potential terrorists are
unlikely to try the asylum route as a devious way into the country because
there are many easier ways to go. Refugee claims are scrutinized much more
stringently than other types of petitions. "My question is, are the laws
making us safer? I think we are spending a lot of money targeting the wrong
people." (Several of the September 11 terrorists came in on student visas.)

That, at least, is nothing new. In the late Seventies, the now-defunct
Haitian Refugee Center (which Little joined in 1985 after graduating from
the University of Miami's law school) uncovered a widespread government
policy called the "Haitian Program," which employed a number of duplicitous
methods for deporting Haitian asylum-seekers. Methods such as extending work
permits one year, then using those permits the next to find and deport
Haitians in sham hearings. This at a time when the bloody Duvalier family
regime was enjoying its second decade of brutal repression. The center sued
and won new cases for 4000 Haitians whose asylum claims had been illegally
denied. After Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, the government
began a new policy of detaining large numbers of immigrants seeking asylum
in enormous centers like Krome.

Still the refugees came. The late Eighties through the mid-Nineties saw the
meltdown of what was left of Haitian society by the long period of
instability after "Baby Doc" Duvalier's 1986 ouster from the country. In
1997 Little worked with advocates such as U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek and
prominent Haitian activists Marleine Bastien and Jean-Robert Lafortune to
get Haitians included in the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American
Relief Act, which exempted hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Central
Americans from the harsher provisions of the 1996 anti-immigration laws. But
Haitians were left out, and more than 100,000 were due for deportation under
the new laws. The advocates fought a trench war in Congress and won some
protection for about 40,000 people.

September 1991 offers a weird bit of déjà vu to the current situation in
Miami. As Little worked the phone Saturday, the afternoon sun cast her
reflection onto a framed portrait of Haitian refugees taken eleven years
ago. They are shown pleading with the U.S. government to help after the coup
d'état that temporarily displaced Haiti's first democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Artistide. In the black and white photograph, a
Haitian man holds a sign reading, "President Bush: How will you feel if you
get overthrown after being elected by the people? Bush: Stop killing
Haitians." And now, some of the same people stand outside the INS building
to petition another Bush (ironically our first president to be
undemocratically elected) for protection from Aristide's corrupt rule.

As Little sat in her office Monday evening, she heard some bad news: The INS
was deporting nineteen Haitians still held aboard the Coast Guard cutter
because they didn't make it to shore. She sighed and looked out the window.
Another small battle lost. And more work to do.







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