1 Central American immigrants filed suit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Friday, demanding that the agency once again let them travel to their U.S. destinations to apply for asylum.
2 The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Brownsville, seeks to reverse INS rules of Dec. 16 that made it impossible for most asylum-seekers to leave south Texas or work while waiting 30 days for approval or denial of their claims.
3 'It would allow the asylum applicant to have the interview and the adjudication of the asylum claim heard and decided by the INS office nearest their intended residence in the U.S.,' said Robert Rubin, who heads the national Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project for the San Francisco Lawyers' Committee for Urban Affairs.
4 A hearing has been set for 9 a.m. Monday on their motion for a temporary restraining order.
5 INS officials in Washington declined comment on the lawsuit because they had not seen it.
6 Most Central Americans enter the United States illegally in the Brownsville area of the lower Rio Grande Valley, the nearest land point to Central America.
7 Officials with the INS' Harlingen District said nine personnel were added Friday, bringing the total of Harlingen asylum adjudicators to 16, and will speed up processing and eliminate a backlog.
8 The lawsuit accuses the INS of imposing a policy change without allowing public comment; of denying aliens access to the asylum process and access to counsel; and improperly restricting the right to work.
9 It cites the case of a 69-year-old Nicaraguan woman who said she slept outside the INS office in Harlingen for three nights to keep her place in line, then was told she needed a fingerprint card.
10 She said she then walked four miles to the Harlingen Police Department to obtain the prints, then returned to the INS office where she again slept outside to keep her place.
11 Before Dec. 16, asylum-seekers in Harlingen were allowed to travel to their U.S. destinations to apply for asylum, often Miami or Los Angeles.
12 INS officials said they adopted the new procedure in Harlingen to reduce huge case backlogs in those cities and to curb abuses of the system that delayed processing for legitimate asylum cases.
13 They also said the new procedure apparently has begun to deter frivolous claims, with the more than 2,000 claims a week in early December reduced to about 1,000 a week since Dec. 16.
14 Those who previously would have traveled out of the area are staying in places such as the condemned Amber Motel in Brownsville, on the border 25 miles south of Harlingen, and a squalid, makeshift campsite where several hundred people have carved out spaces in the brush.

Central American immigrants filed suit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Friday , demanding that the agency once again let them travel to their U . S . destinations to apply for asylum .
apply for asylum
Why do the Central American immigrants want to apply for asylum?