16395: (Hermantin)Sun Sentinel-Deportation set for 4 Haitians (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Deportation set for 4 Haitians


By Leon Fooksman
Staff Writer

August 12, 2003

Fenol Henrius went to the Haitian American Community Council looking for
help completing an asylum application.

What he got, he said, was anything but helpful: His application may have
been mixed up with another client's and sent out too late to make a key
deadline, he later told Florida Bar Association officials. It also
incorrectly dated his arrival in the United States and misstated that the
farmer worked in the oil business, he said.

And Henrius' spring 1998 asylum application said he had never been arrested,
even though he told the council's employees otherwise, according to a bar
association complaint.

Henrius wasn't alone in his troubles with the Delray Beach social services
agency.

Even before the group came under city and county scrutiny this summer for
alleged mismanagement, nepotism and conflicts of interest, the bar
association investigated charges that it practiced law without a license.

Henrius and three other immigrants complained that the Haitian council
"irreparably harmed" their chances for political asylum.

The immigrants told bar association officials in 1999 that Haitian council
employees promised to help them get asylum for a fee.

But the documents they got were botched and the men were out hundreds of
dollars, according to their complaints.

They blamed the council for mixing up their paperwork, missing deadlines,
putting wrong information in official paperwork and giving them the
runaround before their asylum applications were finally sent to immigration
agencies.

When their cases came before immigration judges, they were rejected. An
appeals court also denied their requests.

Now, deportation orders are out for Henrius, Wilford Louis, Patrick Medastin
and Esperendieu Aneus.

Authorities haven't located them. It's unclear exactly how much the Haitian
council's work affected the deportation decision because transcripts of
their immigration hearings were unavailable.

But bar association documents reveal that Haitian council director Daniella
Henry admitted in 2001 that her agency completed asylum applications --
something only lawyers and licensed agencies are supposed to do.

Bar association officials chastised Henry for not understanding immigration
law and application deadlines, and not knowing much about the backgrounds of
her agency's volunteers.

"You may have a very good heart, but at the same time you're putting people
that you want to help in danger of having them lose their right that they
have through the immigration laws," Damaris Garcia, an immigration attorney
and member of the bar association committee that investigated the council,
told Henry at a 2001 hearing.

Henry and board president Carolyn Zimmerman were required to sign affidavits
promising to never do anything that could be considered unlicensed legal
work.

By signing, they admitted no wrongdoing.

"The committee feels very strongly that there are very serious problems and
some serious harm that has resulted and could still result from the
activities that are going on," bar association attorney Janet Bradford
Morgan told Henry at the hearing.

Henry could not be reached for comment, despite several attempts to contact
her in the past three weeks.

The four Haitian immigrants said that they feared they'd be killed if
deported because of their former ties to government opposition.

Among their complaints to the bar association:

Henrius, now 36, said he paid an undisclosed amount to the Haitian council
to complete an asylum application. But he said it wasn't sent out until
about three months after the deadline.

"I put my trust in them because ... Henry acted like she was an attorney and
knew what to do," he said in the complaint.



Aneus said he paid a council employee $150 to process an asylum application.
By the time it was filed, Aneus, now 35, said the deadline had passed and he
couldn't be considered for asylum.

The bar association case was based primarily on hearings at which the four
Haitian men, Henry, and bar members testified.



Sharon Nangle, a program monitor for the county, said her two years of
reviewing the council's activities haven't uncovered any asylum
applications, but she said she has never been told to look for them.

Leon Fooksman can be reached at lfooksman@

sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6647.

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