Court Opinion

ID: 9472716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:08:16.982344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:05.542855
License: Public Domain

GARZA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I congratulate the majority for the scholarly exposition of the problems of refugees and those that seek political asylum.
I must dissent, however, because the majority focuses on aliens in general, who are apprehended in this country after an illegal entry. They fail to focus on the aliens from El Salvador like the ones who are before us. They ignore the two preliminary injunctions that the Immigration & Naturalization Service was under at the time of the hearings of the two Salvadorian aliens who we have before us.
One of those injunctions came from Judge Vela of the Southern District of Texas in Nunez v. Boldin, 537 F.Supp. 578. In that case, Judge Vela ordered the Immigration & Naturalization Service to notify aliens from El Salvador and Guatemala of their right to apply for political asylum. While Judge Vela did not specify at what point the INS should notify these aliens of such right, it is clear that no such notifica*948tion was ever given to the petitioners before us. The Immigration & Naturalization Service filed a Motion for Emergency Stay Pending Appeal and Request for Hearing. That matter came before a panel of this court consisting of Judges Gee, Tate and myself. We entered an order in that case which stated as follows:
Construing the injunctive orders on appeal as applying only to the certified class of citizens and nationals of El Salvador and Guatemala who have been, are, or will in the future be detained at the INS detention center at Los Fresnos, Texas, IT IS ORDERED that the motion of appellant(s) for stay pending appeal is DENIED.
692 F.2d 755. That means that our court left that order still in effect and is still in effect to this day.
This case of Nunez v. Boldin, is still pending in the District Court of the Southern District of Texas and it is my understanding that the case was transferred to another judge of the Southern District of Texas and that a hearing on whether the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Vela should be made permanent or set aside has not yet been decided. The Immigration & Naturalization Service tells us that this injunction was not binding in the case of the two Salvadorians before us because they were not being detained at the INS detention center at Los Fresnos. All that the record shows in this regard is that the deportation hearings before the Administrative Law Judges were held at the INS detention center at Los Fresnos.
The second temporary injunction involved in this type of case was issued by Judge Kenyon of the Central District of California in Orantes-Hernandez v. Smith, 541 F.Supp. 351 (C.D.Cal.1982). In that case, Judge Kenyon was dealing with aliens from El Salvador and certified a class of people from El Salvador in a very fine and exhaustive opinion. Judge Kenyon ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service nationwide not to voluntarily, or after deportation hearing, deport any aliens from El Salvador until they were first notified of their right to apply for political asylum. He explicitly, by exhibits attached to his opinion, ordered the INS to furnish each alien from El Salvador a notice as to his options both in English and in Spanish, which included the right to seek political asylum. This temporary injunction was issued on June 2, 1982, and was really an extension of a similar injunction which had been issued on April 30, 1982. A check of Insta-Cite by our Clerk’s office revealed that no further action had been taken in this case. A check by me with the District Court of the Central District of California revealed that no appeal has ever been taken from that case and that the hearing on whether to make the temporary injunction permanent or not is still pending. In the case of petitioner Rubio, the temporary injunction of Judge Kenyon was already in effect when the deportation hearing was held in his ease on October 28, 1982. In the case of petitioner Ramirez-Osorio, his hearing was held on March 17, 1982, before the injunction of Judge Kenyon was issued, but it was in effect by the time his order of deportation was made effective by the BIA. The BIA should have seen that the record in his case was devoid of any notification ordered by Judge Kenyon.
The fate of these two preliminary injunctions issued by Judges Vela and Kenyon is still in doubt. We do not know whether these injunctions will be dissolved or made permanent, or what fate awaits them on appeal to the Courts of Appeal of the Fifth and Ninth Circuits. But, the fact remains that they are and were in place at the time that the petitioners before us were ordered deported.
The propriety of the issuance of the temporary injunctions issued by Judges Vela and Kenyon is not before us. Even if the majority feels that they are and we hold them wrongfully issued, they still had to be obeyed until such finding of wrongfulness had been issued. Recently we stated in Nat. Maritime Union v. Aquaslide ‘N’ Dive Corp., 737 F.2d 1395 (5th Cir.1984), “The simple rule is that a putatively lawful order enjoining specified conduct may be *949challenged but may not be disobeyed except at the risk of contempt sanctions.” The proceedings before us are not contempt actions against the INS. I ask the majority, is the INS above the law so that they do not have to obey temporary injunctions issued by federal judges dealing with aliens from El Salvador? It is no wonder that the INS has been in no hurry to have these injunctions set aside. After all, they have not been obeying them.
A reading of the International Security and Development Cooperation Act of 1981, Pub.L. No. 97-113 § 731, 1981 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News (95 Stat.) 1557, shows that Congress, while wrestling with the question of El Salvador and El Salvadorian refugees, saw fit to state the following in § 731:
It is the sense of the Congress that the administration should continue to review, on a case-by-case basis, petitions for extended voluntary departure made by citizens of El Salvador who claim that they are subject to persecution in their homeland, and should take full account of the civil strife in El Salvador in making decisions on such petitions.
In expressing the sense of Congress, whom I consider to be the conscience of America, the INS should have been aware of the possibility that aliens from El Salvador presented a special problem. No one who keeps up with the news can be blind to the fact that the civil strife in El Salvador continues with killing by both sides.
Of prime importance to me is the testimony in June of 1980 of David Crosland, Acting Commissioner for the INS, who testified in Congressional hearings that aliens “are interviewed as to why they came here. If they have questions that would flag asylum claims such as a fear of persecution upon being returned, they are identified. Those persons are told what their rights are____” See Footnote 6 in the majority opinion.
A reading of the record before us made before the Administrative Law Judges that held the deportation hearings of Ramirez-Osorio and Rubio, shows that the deportation hearing on Rubio was held on October 28, 1982, and that of petitioner Ramirez-Osorio was held on March 17, 1982, long after the testimony of Acting Commissioner Crosland in June of 1980. Apparently the ALJ’s that held the deportation hearings of these two aliens before us did not do what Acting Commissioner Crosland had told Congress was their practice, since the record of those hearings before us is devoid of any question to the petitioners as to why they had come to the United States.
The INS tells us that we should not entertain the appeal of these two aliens because to this day they have not applied administratively for political asylum. As the appellants state, and as the majority acknowledges, it would be useless at this time for such a request to be made. The appellants ask us to set aside the order of deportation, remand this case so it can start anew, and now that Rubio and Ramirez-Osorio have counsel, they can present a meaningful petition for political asylum.
It is undisputed that the right of applying for political asylum is a right subject to the protection of due process. Haitian Refugee Center v. Smith, 676 F.2d 1023, 1028-39 (5th Cir.1982). The case of Duran v. INS, No. 82-7193 (9th Cir. May 14, 1984) dealt with aliens from the Philli-pines. The reasons given in that opinion finding an obligation on the INS to give notice of the right to petition for political asylum, I would hold, are binding when it comes to aliens from El Salvador, even more so than aliens from the Phillipines because of § 731 of the International Security Act of 1981 as quoted above.
I acknowledge just as the majority does that the filing of meritless petitions for political asylum will increase the workload of the Immigration & Naturalization Service, which is one of the reasons advanced by the INS against informing aliens of their right to political asylum. However, heavy as the workload on the administrator of our laws is, it should never interfere with the application of due process.
*950While the burden of Rubio and RamirezOsorio if they are given an opportunity to file a petition for political asylum is great and they might not succeed (See Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Stevic, — U.S. —, 104 S.Ct. 2489, 81 L.Ed.2d 321 (1984); Lemus de Avelar, et al. v. INS, 741 F.2d 765 (5th Cir., 1984)), they should have the opportunity to file such application for political asylum as they request.
In summary, I would GRANT the petition for review and REMAND for the following reasons:
(1) . The INS ignored and did not follow the temporary injunctions that they were under in Nunez v. Boldin, and Orantes-Hemandez v. Smith, supra.
(2) . The Immigration Service and two administrative law judges in these cases did not follow the procedure which Congress was told was being followed by Acting Commissioner Crosland in determining why Rubio and Ramirez-Osorio had left El Salvador and sought refuge in the United States. If they had been asked why they came to this country, they might have said that they came to this country, not because of their fear of persecution, but to seek work, and we might not have these cases before us. The simple truth, however, is that they were not asked, as Acting Commissioner Cros-land told Congress they would be.
(3) . I agree with the court in Duran v. INS, supra, that without being told of their right to political asylum, this, under the proper circumstances, was a violation of due process and made meaningless the right of aliens from El Salvador to seek political asylum under appropriate circumstances.