Nicaraguan Nurse Is Freed Under New Amnesty Law

Facing imminent deportation, Erika Martin Hooker thought her nine years of life in the United States were going to be for naught.

But the Nicaraguan nurse, a longtime aide at a dialysis clinic, was saved from expulsion and released from an Immigration and Naturalization Service lockup Friday--the first visible impact in Southern California of the Nicaraguan amnesty law signed two days earlier by President Clinton.

“To me it’s a miracle,” Hooker, 54, said upon her release in downtown Los Angeles after more than two months in custody.

Exultant friends, co-workers and compatriots, many waving blue and white Nicaraguan flags, greeted her on the street outside, as cameras from the Spanish-language media recorded her impressions.

“I was sure I was going back to my country,” said a smiling Hooker, whose case had become a cause celebre in Nicaraguan exile circles here. “Now I hope to start my life again with this behind me.”

Julio Cardoza, executive director of Casa Nicaragua, a social service agency based in South Gate, called Hooker’s release “a tremendous victory for our community.”

She became the first Nicaraguan in Southern California known to be freed from INS custody since passage of the amnesty law, which is eventually expected to provide permanent legal residence to more than 100,000 eligible Nicaraguans nationwide. The largest number are concentrated in Florida, but up to 20,000 may be eligible in California.

The new statute--passed by Congress as a sympathetic gesture to those who fled Nicaragua’s formerly leftist government--protects most Nicaraguans who have been in the United States since Dec. 1, 1995. It covers immigrants who, like Hooker, entered illegally.

At least one other Nicaraguan in Florida has also been released from detention by the INS since Clinton signed the bill into law.

A native of the Caribbean coastal town of Puerto Cabezas, Hooker said she arrived here in 1988, and, like many Central Americans, sought political asylum. She said her family, including an aunt in San Diego, was against the Sandinista government.

Her asylum application and subsequent appeals allowed Hooker to work legally in the United States.

She found a job as a patient care technician at a dialysis center in Irvine, using her experience as a nurse in Nicaragua. Friends said she is beloved by the chronically ill population she served.

“All the patients have been asking for her,” said Charlene Pedroza, a co-worker who came to greet her outside the INS lockup. “She’s just awesome.”

Hooker said she believed that her asylum case was still under appeal when INS agents arrived at her Westminster home on Sept. 10 about dawn and arrested her for being in the country illegally. They informed Hooker that her final appeal had been denied, she said. The agency routinely declines to comment publicly on individual cases.

Until Friday, Hooker remained one step away from being put on a plane back home. She said she was not mistreated, though she added that one brash INS jailer in Los Angeles seemed to relish telling her and others over and over that they had to leave the country.

Now, Hooker said, she is eager to piece her life together. She has been on emergency leave from her job, and was concerned about the prospect of unemployment. But after her release, her employer told her via telephone that she can probably return to her previous position at the clinic.

“I’m thrilled,” Hooker said from her home as she had her first Nicaraguan-style meal of beans, rice, fried bananas and cheese since her release.

Once she gets her papers straightened out, she looks forward to returning to Nicaragua voluntarily and visiting her family, including her ailing, 89-year-old mother.

“I learned a lot about myself and others” in custody, said Hooker. “I met people from many different countries. But now I’m just happy to be free again. I must thank God for this.”

Congress granted amnesty to both Nicaraguans and Cubans under the new law, but the inclusion of Cubans was largely symbolic, since other laws already shield most of them from deportation.

(Although the law was passed as a slap at Nicaragua’s former Sandinista regime, many of those it covers left long after the Sandinistas were ousted in 1990.)

The amnesty law also affects hundreds of thousands of El Salvadorans and Guatemalans--the most populous Central American expatriate groups in California, but provides far less protection.

Salvadorans and Guatemalans with at least seven years residence can seek to block deportation because of “extreme hardship.” However, they will have to make their cases before immigration judges with no guarantees of success. Immigrants from former Soviet bloc nations will have similar opportunities.

The INS plans to issue guidelines after Jan. 1.

The law’s disparate treatment of different groups has gouged deep divisions in Southern California’s immigrant community, the nation’s largest. Just released from detention, Hooker added her voice to those saying all should have been treated the same.

“I feel bad that there were a lot of Guatemalan women locked up with me who will be deported,” said Hooker, who has two grown children in Nicaragua. “I don’t think that’s fair. They have come here to work and improve their lives just like I did.”