29590: Hermantin(News)Haitians gain young allies in legal battle (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Nov. 28, 2006



Haitians gain young allies in legal battle

BY NOAH BIERMAN AND TRENTON DANIEL
nbierman@MiamiHerald.com

Here's a story that makes sense only in South Florida: An American law school 
clinic built with money seized from Cuba is suing the U.S. government on behalf 
of Haitian immigrants.

It's confusing, but the results could change the lives of hundreds of 
undocumented Haitians.

It begins in Haiti in 1991, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the elected leader, 
was ousted in a coup -- chaos and violence left thousands of Haitians 
scrambling for sanctuary.

Francoise Sicar, who lived in the northern town of Port-de-Paix, boarded a 
boat. Her father had been beaten to death years earlier, and her mother had 
died from heart disease. She was caught in the Bahamas, she said, and sent back 
to Haiti.

Several years later, Sicar made a second attempt. After about two weeks at sea 
in a packed boat, she and her two infant children reached shore along Palm 
Beach County. She remembers the date: Jan. 26, 1994.

"When you take a boat, you take a chance," said Sicar, now 38. "If I died, I 
didn't care. But God helped me -- he gave me life and saved my two kids."

Sicar was taken into custody at Krome Detention Center and released. In 1998, 
Congress passed a law called the Haitian Refugee Fairness Act that gave tens of 
thousands of Haitian refugees legal residence in the United States -- provided 
they met certain conditions.

Among those who benefited were Haitians given parole status -- a kind of 
immigration purgatory -- before 1996. But Sicar, and perhaps hundreds of 
others, were given "Orders of Release-on-Recognizance (ROR)." Lawyers who work 
for immigrants say ROR was a type of parole, but immigration judges disagree 
and ruled in 2003 and on appeal in 2004 against granting Sicar amnesty.

The Cuban end of the story picks up on Feb. 24, 1996. A Cuban-American pilot 
named Carlos Alberto Costa, 29, boarded a Cessna aircraft with Brothers to the 
Rescue, a group that conducted regular searches to aid rafters attempting to 
leave Cuba. He and three others on the mission were shot down by Cuban MiG 
fighter jets, and their bodies were never recovered.

A year later, Costa's family won part of a $188 million judgment against the 
Cuban government and later settled for $93 million. The Cuban government, 
considering the suit illegitimate, refused to pay, but the U.S. government used 
frozen Cuban assets to pay the families.

Costa's family donated $500,000 in 2004 to help the new law school at Florida 
International University build an immigration clinic, where law students help 
recent arrivals navigate the system. The school was founded on a mission to 
educate lawyers from diverse backgrounds -- about half of the students come 
from immigrant families.

"We have some students send their families here," said Javier Arteaga, 23, a 
second-year law student who meets with clients at Krome regularly as part of 
his clinical hours.

"I'm an immigrant myself," said Joan "Tony'' Montesano, 27, a third-year law 
student from Cuba. "I identify with the goal."

In October, the Costa Clinic students filed their most ambitious case yet, a 
class-action suit on behalf of Sicar and hundreds of others believed to be in 
her situation. Such complicated cases take hundreds of hours of research. Few 
private lawyers or nonprofit organizations can afford to take such cases.

"They basicly made a life here," said third-year student Jordan Dollar, 24, 
about the clinic's Haitian clients. "They've been here for well over a decade 
now. They came here at a time when their government was having a bloody 
overthrow."

Dollar became acquainted with the plight of Haitians before he entered law 
school and began taking trips to Haiti with a Christian ministry that builds 
tilapia fish farms. Sicar lives in Hollywood, has three children and works as a 
line cook in a Boca Raton restaurant. Two of her children are also named in the 
suit. A third came later.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. attorney's office, which 
represents the government, both declined to comment on the suit, citing 
policies against discussing pending litigation.

"Had they filed the [asylum] application on time [by January 1996], they still 
should have been eligible for relief. So I'm not sure how that's the 
government's fault," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations with 
Numbers USA, a Washington legal organization that favors tighter controls on 
immigration.

The case came to FIU through clinic advisor Troy Elder, who previously worked 
for Catholic Charities Legal Services.

"They kept moving the bar on us to deny these people," said Randy McGrorty, 
executive director of Catholic Charities Legal Services. "We're only talking 
about hundreds of people, not thousands, but it's manifestly unfair because 
these people did go to court and they did file for asylum."

McGrorty said the nine attorneys in his office work like a MASH unit, serving 
1,000 clients a month. The FIU students have drafted the complaint, identified 
potential plaintiffs and researched the history of the Haitian Relief Act, 
teaching themselves new areas of the law along the way.

"We could not do a federal lawsuit. We can take people through the 
administrative process, all the way through administrative appeals, but we 
cannot go to federal court," McGrorty said.

Elder said the case will probably take several years. A judge has yet to rule 
on whether to certify the suit as a class action. "I think we're going to have 
a big battle just staying in court," Elder said. "There was really no other way 
to help these people."

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