Xue Lu grew up in China. While attending a state university, she fell in love with a fellow student. But school administrators wouldn’t permit them to marry so the pair wed secretly. Soon Lu was pregnant. When officials found out, they pressured her to have an abortion. Lu refused. She was called in for a meeting. This time, school officials used their fists, beating her so badly that she miscarried. Lu alleges. Eventually, she came to the United States, where she applied for asylum, claiming that the Chinese government would persecute her further if she returned.

     To help her navigate her way through American immigration laws, Lu went to an agency in Alhambra that helps Chinese immigrants with paperwork and legal documents. She got an appointment with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Los Angeles asylum office. On February 16, 2000. Lu, her attorney and her translator drove to the INS regional asylum office in Anaheim and met with INS officer Thomas Powell, a 30-year employee of the federal government.

Court documents lay out what happened next. Eight days after the interview, Powell allegedly called Lu at home and said he needed to see her. Lu said she would contact her attorney and translator to set up another meeting.

     No, Powell told her. He needed to come to her home and talk with her alone. He warned her to make sure no one else would be there. Lu, who spoke limited English and had no idea that this was not the way the INS conducts business, agreed. Two days later, on February 26, Powell showed up at the Alhambra motel room that Lu was renting by the week because she couldn’t afford an apartment. He sat on her bed and opened her asylum application file. He told her he enjoyed helping people and could help her,Powell then moved closer, kissing Lu’s neck and ear and making sexual advances, according to court records. Shocked, Lu moved into the kitchen area of the tiny room. Powell allegedly said that if Lu paid him, he could approve her request for political asylum. Lu told the INS officer that she had no money. Powell then allegedly fondled Lu’s breasts and buttocks. Terrified, Lu again moved away. Powell then approached Lu for a third time and tried to unzip and remove her pants, she claimed. While he did this, he told her repeatedly that he had the power to either approve or reject her application.

“If you don’t like this, I will not approve your case,” Powell told Lu, according to court records. When Lu responded that she didn’t like it, Powell said angrily that he would deny her application. Then he left.

      On March 1, 2000, just three days after Powell’s visit, Lu received a notice saying her application for asylum had been denied.

      Douglas lngraham is a 45-year-old hippie lawyer, a bronzed Venice Beach denizen with extender braids and feathers in his hair. His left hand is tattooed with a blue star, and a diamond stud glints from his right ear. I-Ic’s six feet, six inches tall, with a light beard and wind-tousled hair. If you saw him on the Boardwalk, you’d peg him as a beach volleyball dude who plays on the sand all day, then retires for a few brewskis, just one more intriguing character in the big movie set that is Los Angeles.

     But looks are deceiving. Ingraham, the son of conservative Republicans, grew up in Oklahoma and went to college there. For a while, he ran a cattle ranch. At 30, he came west because “I couldn’t tolerate the extreme whiteness of where I was”

     In Venice, Ingraham bummed around for several years, then began casting
around for a plan. He settled on law school. But not any old law school. In 1991, at age 36, Ingraham enrolled in the People’s College of Law in MacArthur Park.  It was an unaccredited, grassroots kind of place with strong lefty roots. In the 1970s, Cesar Chavez had served on the board. But the People’s College of Law also produced its share of activists, union leaders and politicians, including Antonio Villaraigos, who almost became mayor of Los Angeles.

     After graduating and passing the California bar in 1998, Ingraham began practicing law in Venice. Then he got lobbed a case that would change his life. It was a pro bono job, representing a young Chinese woman who had been detained at the INS’s Terminal Island jail for five months. He had 10 days to prepare. Ingraham took it and won. It was a big deal for a late bloomer with feathers and hair extenders who had gone to an unaccredited law school, and it put him on the map. And much to his surprise, it wasn’t just the liberal Westside map, but the polyglot San Gabriel Valley, where word-of-mouth in the insular Chinese immigrant community triggered a steady stream of clients.

     Soon, Ingraham was leaving Venice most mornings and heading way, way east of La Brea, past the corporate towers of downtown to suburbs like Alhambra and Monterey Park, Rosemead and El Monte, places that hadn’t ever registered on his psychic landscape before. Ingraham didn’t speak Chinese and didn’t advertise in the Chinese-language media, but the business fell into his lap anyway.

     By last year, Ingraham had so many Chinese cases that he opened a second office in Alhambra and hired a Chinese-speaking staff to run it. He also kept his ear to the ground. And so it was last spring that the tall, big-nosed white dude from Oklahoma came to meet a scared Chinese refugee with a horrifying tale to tell about INS abuse.

     Their unlikely coming together would ultimately lead to a $20 million federal civil rights lawsuit against the INS and Powell that alleges deprivation of constitutional rights; sexual battery; assault; negligence; cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment; gender discrimination; and violence against women. Ironically, these kinds of abuses are often what drive immigrants to seek asylum in the United States. But this time, the charges were being leveled at the federal agency that is supposed to offer refuge against such crimes.

 

The INS has refused to comment.

 

      “We"re not going to be able to talk about anything specific to the case” said INS western regional spokeswoman Virginia Kice. “All these issues are matters of ongoing inquiry and it isn’t proper for us to comment on them. We want the process to play out. The vast majority of people in this agency are dedicated professionals who do their job.”

     The lawsuit has shone a rare light on the inner workings of the INS, which. despite Kice’s claim, is notorious for having the most serious and pervasive management and misconduct problems of any segment of the Justice Department, according to Michael Bromwich, who served as inspector general for the U.S. Justice Department from 1994 to 1999. The INS is part of the Justice Department.

     Indeed, Lu’s suit alleges that the INS has known for years that it had problem employees  in Los Angeles and failed to investigate or stop them from preying on vulnerable immigrants. An affidavit by the head of the Los Angeles asylum office confirms that the INS had received previous complaints of improper conduct against Powell, but it is unclear whether they were ever investigated.

     Powell’s case isn’t an anomaly--- -- he is the third local INS officer in two years to be accused of serious crimes. Two other Los Angeles INS officers were recently convicted of bribery. And there are numerous other convictions nationwide.

     “Everyone at Justice is always worried about the INS,” said Harvard Law School professor Philip Heymann, who served as deputy U.S. attorney general in 1993 and ‘94. “It’s always been regarded as a problem agency.”

     Moreover, a New Times review of court documents filed in the Powell case and additional interviews with former INS employees, immigration lawyers and translators who regularly appear before the asylum office paint a picture of a federal office where racism, sexism, homophobia and abuse of asylum applicants is at least tolerated, if not encouraged, by an old boys’ network that is resistant to outsiders and slow to change.

      “A lot of them think they’re above the law,” said St. Elmo Nauman, an INS asylum officer who retired from the L.A. office last year. “They see themselves as holding back the hordes and they believe that refugees are all criminal masterminds. The officers are encouraged to be sarcastic, to laugh at the applicants. There are no checks and balances, no monitoring. If someone files a complaint, nobody cares. You can be as fair or unfair as you want, and that’s not right.”

     lngraham first heard about Lu’s INS problems from employees of the private immigration agency that often hired him to handle cases. But it wasn’t until the late spring of 2000 that he convinced Lu to sit down and tell her story.

Sitting in his no-frills office above a record store in downtown Alhambra, Ingraham remembers thinking how stacked the odds were against Lu. There were no witnesses-- -- Powell allegedly had seen to that. Which meant there was little proof. On top of that, his client didn’t speak English. It would be the translated word of a disenfranchised, desperate refugee against a longtime INS asylum officer with the full force of the United States government behind him.

     “It’s hard to convince a jury that way, because of course he’s going to claim that she made it all up,” lngraham explains.

     As Ingraham mulled his options, he also consulted with Ben Schonbrun, a noted civil rights lawyer in Venice. lngraham had worked for Schonbrun ‘s firm while still in law school. Now he decided that if Lu’s story panned out, he would bring Schonbrun in on the case. Several weeks passed.

     Meanwhile, on May 23, 2000, Jie Hao, another Chinese woman who had applied for political asylum and hired the same immigration agency as Lu, had her own interview with INS officer Powell. Hao was a Christian who claimed religious persecution. Three days later, Powell called Hao, saying he wanted to meet with her regarding her asylum application. On May 30, after numerous attempts to contact Hao by phone, Powell finally reached her. He explained that he had an offer for her regarding her asylum application but that it had to be kept secret, according to court documents. Powell wanted to come to Hao’s home to discuss the mailer and warned her not to have anyone present. She agreed to meet him on June 4.

     But unlike Lu, Hao confided in the immigration attorney who had accompanied her to the INS interview. Was Powell’s request normal operating procedure? the Chinese refugee wanted to know. The attorney then called Ingraham to report the strange sequence of events, and the hippic lawyer felt his skin begin to crawl.

Hao’s story was almost identical to Lu’s. But again, there was the problem of proof.  If they could get Powell on tape, soliciting sex or bribes in exchange for granting asylum, it would be solid evidence that the INS would have a hard time explaining away. But Powell was meeting with Hao in three days. Ingraham had exactly 72 hours to organize a sting.

     Ingraham put in a call to Mike Gennaco, who then headed the civil rights section of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Quickly he laid out the allegations and explained what he wanted. Gennaco immediately put Ingraham in touch with Jeff McCready, an investigator for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which investigates complaints against the INS.

     When McCready met with him, Ingraham said, the investigator didn’t seem enthusiastic. According to lngraham, McCready complained that the short lead time didn’t give his office enough time to prepare. He wanted Hao to call Powell back and reschedule the meeting for later in the week.

     Ingraham blew up at McCready. “If she did that, it would tip [Powell] off right away that something was up, because there is no way in hell that she, an asylum applicant, would be calling him,” the lawyer said. “It just isn’t done. If she did that, we would lose him.”

     lngraham told McCready that if the feds didn’t move immediately to set up the sting, he would call the LAPD and the L.A. County District Attorney’s office and get them on the case.

     In his conversations with McCready’ and Gennaco, lngraham said, he learned several disturbing things that led him to believe that the INS and the U.S. Artorney’s office already suspected Powell of abusing his post. lngraham said that when he first told Gennaco his story, the federal prosecutor allegedly responded that his office already had opened an investigative file on Powell.

“This [Hao complaintl is just icing on the cake for us,” Gennaco allegedly told lngraham.

     When Ingraham repeated the tale to McCready, the investigator allegedly told him that his office already had “a lot” on Powell and knew that the INS asylum officer preyed on Chinese women because he believed they were more vulnerable somehow.

     It is impossible to verify lngraham’s version of events. McCready declined to talk to New Times, except to say, “There is an investigation and it’s ongoing” and “Our office responds to any allegation of misconduct.” Gennaco also declined comment. The inspector general’s office in Washington declined to respond to questions faxed by New Times.

     But the INS’s own testimony in the lawsuit seems to support lngraham’s assertions that the feds already knew.

     In a sworn declaration dated May 31, 2001, Robert V. Looney, chief of the INS Los Angeles asylum office, said that a supervisor on his own staff reported allegations of improper conduct by Powell in August 1999 to the Office of the Inspector General. The allegations involved a Somali asylum applicant. The OIG investigated and declared the allegation unsubstantiated after the applicant withdrew it.

     In May 2000, Looncy learned of a second allegation of improper conduct by Powell involving an Indonesian applicant. Looney said he reported this matter to the inspector general’s office and that by May 31, 2001--- -- an entire year later--- -- the “OIG has not notified me of the official disposition of this matter.”

Yet despite the allegations, the INS allowed Powell to remain in his sensitive asylum officer job, where he allegedly continued preying on refugee women.

      In June 2000, Ingraham surfaced with his two new alleged victims, demanding that the feds set up a sting. In retrospect, Ingraham believes the government wasn’t eager to catch one of its own violating the law. “I almost got the feeling,” he said, “they would have preferred that the whole thing dry up and blow away."

     But the OIG did organize the sting, and an unsuspecting Powell arrived at Hao’s apartment on June 4 as scheduled, not realizing his words were being recorded.

      The asylum officer sat on the couch and told Hao that her application had numerous problems. When Hao asked him to explain, Powell smiled and stated that he could either approve or reject Hao’s application. Then he allegedly told Hao he could approve it if she paid him $2,000. During this meeting, Powell “improperly and offensively touched plaintiff on private parts of her body,” according to the lawsuit.

     On June 8, Powell returned to Hao’s apartment and collected $2,000 that had been supplied by the U.S . government. During that visit, Powell again allegedly touched Hao in an offensive way, according to the lawsuit.

Powell then left. That same day, the OIG informed the INS that it had substantiated at least some of the claims by Lu and Hao. The INS placed Powell on paid administrative leave.

     More than 20 months later, Powell remains on leave and continues to draw his salary. Be has not been arrested. No charges have been filed.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney’s office said that a criminal investigation into Powell’s activities continues. Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Wittcoff said the case is taking a long time because it is complicated.

     Powell isn’t the first local INS officer to come under a criminal cloud.

In 1999. INS Asylum Officer Ralph Leyva was sentenced to 15 months in prison for accepting bribes of up to $2,600 in exchange for approving asylum petitions. Last September,Jessie Gardona, a member of the INS antismuggliflg team in Los Angeles. pleaded guilty to taking bribes for springing immigrants from INS jails and releasing them to relatives in the United States. FBI officials said Gardona ran his lucrative side business -- which netted him thousands of dollars per person -- with the help of a Mexican drug trafficker in East Los Angeles, who delivered the released immigrants and collected the payments.

      While the INS may try to portray Leyva, Gardona and Powell as rogue agents, the truth may be more ominous.

     “There are rogue officers out there, but I believe there are too many rogue officers,” said Michael Brotmvich, the former inspector general.

“Clearly, a significant number of INS officials who engage in this conduct have made the calculation that they’re likely to be able to get away with it,” he said. “it’s not uncommon to have complaints and allegations of misconduct that are simply not taken seriously by supervisors. The message that’s sent out by megaphone to the public is, we don’t have any rights, any powers. to be dealt with seriously, and the INS has such a history of poor management from top to bottom that it’s difficult to create a culture of accountability where misconduct is dealt with swiftly and strongly.”

     Bromwich said the INS desperately needs to develop such a culture.

“Unfortunately, over the years this has not been the case. You have numerous offices where there appear to have been fairly widespread problems with corruption and people being able to buy citizenship. You create the potential for cancers to metastasize atid wrongdoing to be perpetuated, and that’s a real shame.”

    The corruption isn’t limited to the rank and file. In 2000, John Shandorf, a supervisor in the INS’s New York asylum office, was convicted of conspiracy and bribery for accepting money from at least 30 people to approve applications.

Nationwide, the INS and inspector general’s office launched 4,551 internal investigations of the federal immigration agency in 2000 -- one per seven workers. By contrast, internal investigators opened one inquiry per 25 DEA employees in fiscal 2000-- and one per 50 FBI employees, according to the Portland Oregonian, which won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Reporting last year for a series of stories about INS abuses.

      Bromwich contrasts corruption at the INS with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, a similarly sized agency that also deals with a vulnerable population. While the prison agency might be expected to have similar problems, Bromwich said it has a tradition of reporting and investigating allegations of misconduct, while the INS does not.

     “BOP is a far better managed agency with a reputation for punishing offenders,” he said. “Word goes out: You’re going to pay the piper. And so the number of BOP complaints is a small fraction of the INS’s.”

Bromwich said that besides criminal matters, he was also very frustrated during his tenure by the INS’s unwillingness to make its employees more accountable in smaller ways.

     “There was a lot of looking the other way. If you have bad employees and you let them think they can get away with treating people improperly, they’ll do it. If you get three instances of treating applicants incredibly rudely, making sexist and homophobic comments, it suggests that something’s going on, and you have the duty to investigate this and punish the person if that’s going on. You deal with them severely; you give them a censure, a reprimand, to make clear that that conduct is not acceptable.”

     Bromwich added that a lot of INS employees viewed all applicants as “an invading party to be opposed and fought.”

     “They tend to [have] an “us versus them’ mentality more than any other federal agency I can think of,” said the former inspector general. “They talk to each other; they are very self-righteous about how hard they work and how underpaid they are. You work in that environment for a while and those attitudes harden and you get further away from respecting [the immigrants’] humanity.”

INS officials strenuously’ dispute this view.

      We don't tolerate that kind of conduct," spokeswoman Kice said.  "When this agency becomes aware of allegations of improper conduct or behavior, we move quickly to make sure they are investigated. We cooperate fully. When you have an agency with more than 30,000 employees, you’re going to have occasions.”

In his affidavit in the Lu/Hao lawsuit, Los Angeles asylum office director Looney pointed out that all INS officers must conduct themselves appropriately. He said there is a large poster in the waiting room that advises asylum applicants how to report improper treatment by INS staff.

      Additionally, said Bill Strassberger, the INS’s head of public relations in Washington, D.C., asylum officers hear daily tales of woe and must ferret out who is telling the truth and who is lying. That, he said, is an extremely difficult job.

“They’re dealing with people who have fled persecution, torture; they’ve seen some of the worst behavior by man to man; and they’re listening to these stories and they’re deciding the fate of that individual,” said Strassberger. “There are other people trying to take advantage of the system. You don’t want to become cynical, to have trouble believing anyone. At the same time you want to provide the refuge for someone who has fled torture. It’s very trying.”

     The INS Asylum Officer Corps was set up in 1990 as part of the 1980 Refugee Act, which required the INS to refrain from returning refugees to nations where their lives or freedom would be threatened. Prior to 1980, asylum cases were heard by adjudication officers with little expertise or training.

     “It was done by clerks in basements of the L.A. INS office,” said Nauman, the retired asylum officer. “They had people waiting in line. Clerks would say, “Well, were you raped or not? Speak up!’ What’s a person supposed to do? There are strangers standing all around them, and they’ve got 15 minutes to tell their story.”

After 1990, some of those clerks received special training and became asylum officers. Others were promoted from elsewhere inside the INS. But the federal agency also had to hire from outside. Generally, the asylum officers had college degrees and some international experience, INS officials said. Some might have worked with nongovernmental agencies overseas, doing refugee work, or been Peace Corps volunteers.

      Asylum officers -- who earn roughly from $55,000 to $70,000 annually -- receive six weeks of training in everything from asylum law to cross- cultural skills to interviewing techniques and political conditions in various countries. Once hired, they also undergo four hours of weekly training to keep them briefed on international developments.

      But mainly they conduct interviews, review paperwork and make recommendations on asylum cases that are then forwarded to a supervisor for approval. While supervisors have the ultimate say, they rely heavily on the recommendations of the case officers. Individuals who are denied asylum can appeal to the U.S. Immigration Court, a federal body that is notorious for granting relatively few appeals.

      Today there are roughly 300 asylum officers working in eight offices across America. Nauman was one of those hired from the outside in the ‘90s to fill the growing need in the Asylum Corps. A Sinophile, he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University and has written six philosophy books. In addition to working as an asylum officer, he taught philosophy part-time at Chapman University in Orange.

     Nauman said morale in the Asylum Corps was poor and many officers were depressed, demoralized and overworked. He also alleges that the INS encouraged officers to deny applications, which generates less paperwork than approving them.

     “The first supervisor I worked for was so against approvals that the officers in his group would wait until he went on vacation and then give them to another supervisor to sign,” Nauman said.

Indeed, the grim scenario sketched by Bromwich appears to have played out in the INS’s Los Angeles asylum office, according to court records, depositions and interviews with attorneys, translators and former INS employees contacted by New Times during a three-month investigation.
      Nauman recalled that one officer -- since promoted to supervisor -- picked up a file one day and announced, “Here’s another lying Pakistani.” A second boasted about turning back desperate Burmese fleeing the repressive dictatorship in Myanmar. A third summed up his philosophy of handling asylum applications to Nauman this way; “Approvals are like magnets. They attract more work.”

Nauman said that after he gave information to the inspector general’s office, which was investigating a complaint about Looney in 1999, the head of the asylum office fired him, saying he was not working fast enough. Nauman appealed the decision and ultimately took early retirement.

     Nauman’s descriptions of problems at the INS are echoed by a former supervisor with the Los Angeles asylum office whose affidavit is part of Lu and Hao’s civil rights lawsuit.

     Judy Marty, who worked as an INS asylum supervisor in Anaheim from 1993 to 2000, also came from outside the system. A longtime human rights lawyer, Marty had worked extensively in immigration law, migrant rights, domestic violence and equal opportunity employment. From 1991 to 1993, she was employed by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees as liaison for a Hong Kong refugee camp.

      In 1996, Marty was assigned to review and revise training materials for the Asylum Corps nationwide. She also trained officers in international law, immigration law, intercultural communication, interview techniques for torture victims and juvenile detention procedures.

      Additionally, she served as an expert witness in one of the largest immigration fraud cases successfully prosecuted by the Justice Department. And she developed a training program for 100 officers in the L.A. asylum office, organizing the weekly four-hour session in which officers underwent training on sensitive topics such as diversity, post-traumatic stress and homosexuality.

Marty said this drew the ire of many officers, who didn’t appreciate her telling them how to do their job. After March 1998. when Looney became director of the Los Angeles asylum office. they began to clash “I was labeled not a team player because I complained about racism, sexism and improper adjudication,” Marty wrote in her sworn affidavit. “This also gave permission for me to be targeted in the office by those who agreed with Mr. Looney’s approach. He was making fun of the training materials and giving permission to the supervisors not to follow them.”

      Marty said that Looney “participated in and tolerated the abuse of asylum applicants,” citing an April 1999 case in which Looney allegedly ordered a Somali man arrested in view of a roomful of asylum seekers. The man was then forced to sit in a car with the windows closed for 20 to 30 minutes in sweltering heat. In the past, when arrests were necessary, applicants would be apprehended at home or work. When Marty asked Looney why this very public display was necessary, Looney allegedly told her: “I just want them to stop coming here.”

Marty also voiced serious concerns about Powell after receiving information from another asylum officer in August 1999 that Powell was allegedly using coercion and threats to extort money from an interpreter whose asylum application had already been approved.

     “I was informed that Mr. Powell told the interpreter that he had checked his file and found some “irregularities,”’ Marty testified. “Mr. Powell stated to the interpreter. “I can ruin your future in this country. You have to pay the price’

Marty reported the allegations to the OIG and also informed the U.S. Attorney’s office, expecting that they would soon contact her for further information. But she never heard from either office.

      She also learned that Powell and other officers were keeping asylum files for long periods instead of adjudicating them promptly as required by INS rules. In one case, she reported to Looney that Powell kept a file for 407 days. but, she said, Looney did nothing about it. Marty said she wanted to report this violation to the OIG but Looney refused to do so.

     “The retention of a file gives the hearing officer the requisite time and information to contact the asylum applicant and request, for example, sexual favors or money" Marty testified.  "Mr Powell’s retention of the file -for months was in clear violation of INS policy."

      Marty also alleged that Looney tried to circumvent an INS policy regarding
the reporting of abuse allegations at INS detention centers. According to
Marty, these reports are supposed to go directly to the INS’s Office of
Internal Audit for investigation.

      “I received resistance from Mr. Looney in February 1999 when I tried to follow this procedure,” she said. “He changed the policy. We had to inform Mr. Looney of any allegations of abuse so he could inform the INS department heads where the alleged abuse took place before we notified Washington, D.C., or the OIA directly.”

     The Justice Department, which oversees the OIG, said it cannot comment on Marty’s allegations due to the pending litigation against Powell. Ditto for the INS. The INS also declined to allow Looney to be interviewed.

“This is one of those cases where there are a lot of things we’d like to say, but our hands are tied by the ongoing litigation,” said INS spokeswoman Kice. “It’s frustrating.”
       But colleagues outside the INS who know Marty’s immigration work speak highly of her.
     “She really knows her stuff about domestic violence law, international refugee law and that’s the background she brought with her into this asylum work. She’s really more qualified than most,” said Hae Jung Cho, a Los Angeles-based human rights activist who worked with Marty on the case of “Got,” an abused, HIV-positive Thai boy whom the INS is trying to deport to his homeland.

Meanwhile, last June, Marty filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in Washington under the Whistleblower Act, laying out new allegations and saying that the federal government might have avoided the $20 million Lu/Hao lawsuit if her concerns had been addressed earlier.

      Among the accusations in the complaint, which was obtained by New
Times: A gay asylum applicant was forced to walk down the hall as INS officers looked on in order to determine whether he walked in a swishy manner, and thus was a true homosexual, or was just lying to get asylum.

       When she attempted to supervise diversity training on gay rights, INS officers and supervisors accused her of being a lesbian and turning them into homosexuals.

      When she raised concerns about racism and sexism with Looney, he allegedly replied, “You’re the only one who feels that way” and “it’s better here than the rest of the INS.”

      After challenging Looney's new policy that complaints about detention centers should be sent to him first, she was jeered as a “Serpico” and “alien-lover.”

      Female employees were subjected to unwanted advances and comments by male employees.

Marty alleges that in retaliation for her complaints, Looney began lowering her performance ratings in evaluations and denying her international assignments that would have advanced her career. She alleges that he also moved her desk three times in one year, eventually placing her right next to Powell, who knew she had filed the OIG complaint against him.

      The INS, citing the impending lawsuit, declined to answer a five-page letter from New Times laying out these allegations and requesting a response.

Marty said that as a result of her job situation, she got very sick, developing a stress-induced breathing problem as well as a recurrent infection. Eventually she required an operation. She quit on January 31, 2000, walking away from a pension and health plan rather than endure any more mistreatment, she said. In her whistleblower letter, Marty said she initially refrained from going public with her story for fear of disturbing the criminal investigation of Powell. Once the lawsuit was filed, however, she felt she had no reason to remain silent.

      “Racism and sexism are offensive to me. I chose to work in the human rights field to help alleviate them,” Marty wrote in her complaint. “Having to witness these incidents continuously was very distressful to me. I felt like Ralph in Lord of the Flies. The rules for right and wrong seemed to be completely turned around."

Last November, the Special Counsel’s office informed Marty that it was investigating her complaints. That probe has not been finished.

      By 6 o’clock each morning, a line is already forming at the unmarked three-story building in Anaheim that serves as the INS regional asylum office for much of California, Arizona and Nevada. A video camera scans the crowd and an armed, uniformed guard keeps everyone in line and chases away loiterers

By 9a.m., the sun is usually beating down and there is no shelter for those standing outside. In winter they must stand in the rain. Those lucky enough to have hired lawyers--- -- usually the Chinese, some Africans, rarely the Latinos--- -- confer with them, riffling sheaves of paper. Translators move up and down the line, greeting colleagues, trading gossip, wondering how much longer they will stand outside until they are admitted inside for more waiting.

      Attorneys say it’s not unusual to wait for hours, only to learn that their appointment has been canceled or rescheduled for another day. Sometimes they arrive for a 6:30 a.m. interview and don’t leave the building until 5:30p.m.

“It’s very hard on the clients because if the INS reschedules, they have to pay the lawyer and the interpreter for another day, and most of them don’t have that much money to begin with,” said one immigration attorney, who didn’t want to be quoted by name for fear of jeopardizing future cases. “And if you complain, you start getting a reputation as a troublemaker, and it’s very, very important to maintain good relations with these people, from the guards to the ones at the very top.”

Kice, the INS regional spokeswoman. denies that applicants regularly endure long waits. She says that on any given day, anywhere from 50 to 70 asylum officers conduct up to 200 interviews.

      Waiting “is the exception, and not the rule; the lines typically are short,” - Kice said. "It's very infrequent that someone would have to wait hours if _they come at their scheduled times. We schedule as many appointments as we think we can handle. It’s a bad analogy, but it’s like the airlines, who overbook flights because they know there will be no-shows.”

Kice also blamed applicants for showing up late and for bringing along family members, which she says creates bottlenecks. Without explaining why, Kice said it is not feasible to install an awning to provide the applicants with shelter from the elements.

       Many INS asylum officers are fair and open-minded, and treat applicants with dignity and respect, said lawyers. But there are also bad apples who regularly belittle applicants and reject cases, regardless of the merits, they added. And attorneys alleged that the INS makes no attempt to control or remove abusive officers who view applicants as liars and criminals until they prove otherwise.

Indeed, the attorneys claimed that their complaints are often ignored, asylum seekers are humiliated and abused during interviews and supervisors appear to tacitly allow or even encourage racist, sexist and homophobic behavior.

“Ninety percent of the time, you know ahead of time whether your client is going to win based on who you get, and that’s horrible,” said one attorney.

Strassberger, the INS chief spokesman in Washington, D.C., countered that it’s not fair to judge asylum officers based on their record because the facts vary with each case.

     “You can’t judge an asylum officer’s performance solely on the percentage of cases they approve or disapprove,” Strassberger explained. “They are not making these decisions in a vacuum, and they are regularly reviewed. And any asylum case is always subject to appeal.”

      But the stories of petty humiliations, verbal abuse and disrespect are legion. The head of Carecen, a nonprofit immigration and human rights organization in Los Angeles that works with Latino immigrants, said her group receives at least 100 complaints each year about INS mistreatment.

“People are being treated with total lack of respect, but they’re afraid to complain because they’re afraid it’s going to affect the outcome,” said Angela Sanbrano, Careecn’s executive director. “They totally intimidate people, treat them like criminals. They really don’t behave as if they’re public servants; they act as though they’re running a prison camp. The culture really needs to change.”

Immigration attorneys said that when interacting with a problem officer, they must walk a fine line between standing up for their clients and lodging complaints that might backfire.

      “You have these problem officers who shouldn’t be there and shouldn’t be doing that job, and everyone knows who they are, including the asylum office,” said Loretta Nelms Reyes, a San Diego immigration attoniey who regularly represents asylum seekers. “They have certain directives they have to follow, but often they do what they want. The only option is to take good notes and write a complaint. And it does pose a problem, because once you write a complaint letter, the next time that officer calls you, you wonder, will you be punished?”

To avoid this, attorneys resort to all sorts of subterfuge.

“We all play tricks down there,” one told New Times. “If you get a bad officer, you get sick suddenly, or your translator gets sick. You can say your client prefers a female asylum officer if you get a male officer, or vice versa. You can schedule your appointment on a day when you know a bad officer isn’t going to be there, or is on vacation.”

      Some immigration attorneys have been known to stop interviews and ask for another officer. Others request the presence of a supervisor, hoping that will ensure fairness.

     “I stopped an interview [recently],” said lngraham. “I insisted that a supervisor come sit in and have a role in the decision-making. They’re asking a question, and there’s this rolling of the eyes, this accusatory tone. They tell the applicant, this is a nonadversarial procedure, yet they are completely adversarial in their questions; they don’t even follow their own training manuals.”

Attorneys concede that there is immigration fraud and that officers must get testy after hearing the same stories over and over. There may even be terrorists trying to sneak in, although they probably wouldn’t call attention to themselves by applying for permanent asylum. But if officers can’t retain their humanity and judge fairly, they shouldn’t be working at this sensitive job where people’s lives hang in the balance, advocates said.

      And this is where the complaints pile up. One translator who didn’t want to be named for fear of being barred from the INS recalled an asylum officer who hurled her client’s documents onto thc floor in a rage and would not allow him to pick them up. Another time, an officer drove a wheelchair-bound man to tears. “My client, an older man, was shaking so hard that he couldn’t even sign the documents, and she just laughed at him; she wouldn’t allow him to take a break to compose himself.”

      Robert Foss, Carecen’s legal director, said an officer once told him he doesn’t believe that gay asylum seekers should be allowed into the United States. Another lawyer recalled an asylum officer who refused to allow a translator to use the restroom during a three-hour interview.

The lawyer filed a formal complaint after another officer asked her client----- a Somali refugee-- -- repeated and unnecessary questions about how she was raped in her homeland, including what the rapist did with his hands as he violated her.

      Sandra Ronald, an immigration attorney in Calabasas, wrote a complaint letter after an asylum officer displayed what she believed was homophobia.

“My client was sobbing and really upset,” Ronald said. “I would have sued the INS if they hadn’t apologized and given me another officer. There are a couple of good officers there who are really fair, but there are others who after a time get really tired and cynical, or they feel they’ve heard the same story over and over again. And sometimes they really get things confused.”

      But most everyone agreed that those with lawyers are the lucky ones. Lawyers can take notes and establish a written record in case future appeals are necessary, since the interviews aren’t taped. They can halt an unfair interview or ask for a supervisor to be brought in. While they cannot interrupt the interview, they are allowed to make a short speech at the end,summing up the merits of their client’s application and why it should be granted. And it is widely believed that their presence helps keep asylum officers in line.

     “People who don’t have attorneys are mistreated a lot more,” retired asylum officer Nauman said. “Officers tend to be more careful when there’s an attorney in the room.”

      Added immigration lawyer Nelms Reyes, “One interpreter told me, “That officer who was so nice when I was interpreting with you kept us at the interview for five hours, badgering us.’ Some interpreters refuse to do interviews unless there's a lawyer present.”

       She added: “There are myriad ways to intimidate someone without insulting them outright. You’re dealing many times with individuals who are fragile, who are afraid, who have gone through interrogations in the past, and they revive that fear of their persecutors when they act this way.”

Said Carecen’s Foss: “I have people who are in therapy just so they can go to the hearing.”

       Sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant near his Alhambra office, expertly slurping his noodles in tangy beef broth, Ingraham trades pleasantries with the waitress. She has long black hair, thick bangs and ivory skin.

“I tell her she looks like Cher,” he says. “She doesn’t know who Cher is.”

But then his thoughts turn back to Powell and what the INS knew. His eyes narrow. His voice lowers and he grows angry.

      “What this guy did was heinous,” lngraham says. “He wanted sex for asylum and if they didn’t give it, he would deport them. He’s a monster.”

       But hold on. Powell hasn’t been convicted, much less charged with any crime yet.

       Ingraham waves his white plastic soup ladle dismissively. “The INS knew he was doing this,” insists the lawyer. “Why did they keep him there, in that sensitive job? At the very least, they could have transferred him to a position where he wasn’t coming into direct contact with asylum applicants.”

 

From newtimesla.com
Originally published by New Times L.A. Mar 14, 2002

Reprinted by permission.  Learn more about the writer, Denise Hamilton at:  http://www.denisehamilton.com

 

Update from Judith Marty:  " I want to be very clear.  I support the Asylum Corps 110%.  Its mission to protect asylum-seekers in accordance with United States' international agreements is of the highest order.  Let's all work together to eliminate corruption and assure asylum-seekers have a safe haven in the United States to seek sanctuary from the horrors of persecution."

 

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) website includes the following report:

"An INS political asylum officer assigned to the INS's Anaheim, California, office was arrested in the Central District of California on charges of bribery and deprivation of rights under color of law. An investigation by the Los Angeles Field Office revealed that the political asylum officer was soliciting Chinese female asylum applicants for sexual favors and money in exchange for granting them
asylum. "  Semiannual Report to Congress, April 1, 2002–September 30, 2002
Office of the Inspector General. Read other reports about corruption at:

 

 

 

If you need assistance with your complaint, contact Lobo Legal at:

 

 

1. Always record the names of all persons present, the date of the incident, and the facts of any interaction you have with a government official as soon as possible.  If you need the information later, you will have a record.

2. Keep copies of all documents you receive from the government or you provide to the government.

3. Find out the names of all persons in a supervisory position over the government official serving you.

4. Provide a copy of your OIG complaint or any other complaint to your Congressional representatives.

 

 

1. The Oregonian newspaper received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of articles about wrongdoing and abuse by immigration officials. Read about it in the Archives at: http://www.oregonlive.com

 

2. For an unprecedented inside view of the workings of an asylum office, arrange to see the documentary film, "Well-Founded Fear" by Shari Roberson & Michael Camerini at: http://www.unaff.org/2000/F-Well.htm

 

or http://www.offoffoff.com/radio/00q2/wellfoundedfear.php3   for a review.

 

3. To review an asylum case for a Turkish Kurd, arrange to see the Award winning documentary film, "Good Kurds, Bad Kurds" by Kevin McKiernan at:

 

"Brilliant...in the very best tradition of American muckraking."  Studs Terkel

 

NOW, PUT IT ALL IN PROPER PERSPECTIVE:  Words of Encouragement