Hunger Strikers Seek INS Case Reviews

MIAMI —  A little-noticed but persistent hunger strike by four Cuban Americans has increased the pressure on federal immigration officials to speed up case reviews of more than 4,000 criminal immigrants held in indefinite detention.

The strikers, all parents of sons held in custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, marked their 36th day without food Wednesday in a makeshift encampment outside the gates of Krome Detention Center at the edge of the Everglades.

Two of the strikers were recently hospitalized with health problems linked to the fast, but both returned to the vigil within hours.

“My son is very worried about what I am doing,” Miriam Alonso, 44, said through tears as she propped herself up on a cot under a tarpaulin not 12 feet from a busy highway. “But I will stay here until my son is free or I am taken to the cemetery.”

Alonso, along with Marta Berros, 57, Eladio Alfonso, 53, and Mireya Cortes, 48, are subsisting on water and fruit juice to protest the pace of INS reviews of criminal immigrants caught up in a legal limbo caused by a 1996 law. As enacted by Congress, the law mandates the deportation of noncitizens guilty of certain felonies.

But natives of Cuba--along with those of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos--cannot be deported because the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with those nations.

Thus INS detainees, including many in California facilities, remain jailed with no release dates even after having served felony sentences--some for relatively minor or nonviolent offenses--often committed years ago.

Dagoberto Monrabel, 33, for example, Berros’ son, has a community college degree in engineering and, although classified as a habitual offender because of drug use, was never convicted of a violent crime. He has been in INS custody for three years.

In Washington, INS spokeswoman Maria Cardona said the hunger strike means “a lot of attention is being given to this. It is inevitable that it would have an impact.”

Indeed, INS officials at Krome on Wednesday told attorneys for the strikers’ sons that all four would be brought to south Florida for another review of their cases. All are being held in other detention facilities.

Maria Elena Garcia, an INS spokeswoman at Krome, said district director Robert Wallis decided to review the cases because of the hunger strike, which has begun to attract large groups of supporters from Cuban exile and human rights organizations.

Thomas Wenski, auxiliary bishop of the Miami Catholic archdiocese, was one of about 65 people who stopped Tuesday at the site, which is festooned with Cuban and American flags and handwritten signs protesting INS policy.

“Basically, they are taking people who have committed minor offenses and turning them into political prisoners,” said Wenski over the blare of Cuban patriotic music and the blaring horns of truckers signaling their support.

However, INS officials in Washington insisted that the strike would not affect release decisions. “These people were detained for a reason,” Cardona said. “Our priority is to keep the community safe.”

Although the population of convicted felons in INS custody has dropped by more than 2,000 in the last six months, what to do with those kept in custody because of the 1996 law remains a stubborn problem.

Shrinking detention space has led to crowding in INS detention facilities and forced the agency to detain hundreds of others in rented county jail cells.

Outbreaks of violence and discontent are common. Last month as many as 650 INS inmates, frustrated over the pace of deportation proceedings, took part in a six-hour disturbance in the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster, Calif.

The news that their sons would be brought back to south Florida washed the bedridden strikers with a wave of optimism. But they vowed to continue the fast despite warnings from an attending doctor that their health is failing. He urged them to declare victory and eat.

“I am weak,” said Berros, who spent Sunday and Monday in the hospital after losing consciousness. “I can no longer walk, and I have pains in my stomach. But my spirit is strong.

“I don’t want to stay alive if my son is caged like an animal. And he is not the only one we are doing this for. So we are going to continue.”

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Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.