American Notes IMMIGRATION

Bundled in gray garbage bags, 100 young men from Central America spend the night dozing against the brick wall of an Immigration and Naturalization Service center in Harlingen, Texas. On a muddy field in nearby Brownsville, 75 families endure a driving rainstorm crouched under plastic sheeting. At an abandoned hotel, children shiver around wood fires and try to sleep in cold, gutted rooms under mounds of donated blankets. By official estimate, at least 5,000 refugees from war and deteriorating economies in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have been stranded in South Texas since the INS last month directed applicants for political asylum coming through the Rio Grande Valley to stay there until their cases are decided. The jam eased temporarily last week when a federal judge lifted the travel ban and hundreds of aliens boarded buses for Miami, Houston and Los Angeles. But hundreds more had no money to go anywhere. And the INS is trying in court to reimpose the travel ban. Ironically, its aim is to lessen pressure on other communities such as Miami, where Nicaraguan aliens are camped in a baseball stadium and Mayor Xavier Suarez is pleading for an emergency meeting with the President.