Molly Ivins January 7

AUSTIN, TEXAS — When Congress held hearings last year on the premise that the Internal Revenue Service is our most abusive and out-of-control federal agency and urgently needs to be reined in, the true connoisseurs of government abuse quietly smiled in amusement. As everyone who is interested in such matters knows, the IRS is a set of gentlemen and pussycats compared to the real champion of abuse, the INS.

The reason you hear so little about the egregious wrongs of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the reason that no one holds hearings in Washington and the right-wing militia types don't raise Cain about it is obvious: The INS doesn't go after U.S. citizens.

Even civil libertarians, who can normally be counted on to yowl loudly over such stunts as putting people who have committed no crime whatever in jail for months on end, carry no brief for the luckless foreigners who run afoul of the INS in the land of the free. Only the smaller and less powerful human-rights groups seem to be under the curious impression that the U.S. government should be required to treat people from Asia, Africa and Latin America with a modicum of decency, with just a hint of justice.

Notice that I specify immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Of course we wouldn't want to accuse the INS of being racist on top of all its other sins, but you notice that immigrants from Europe or Australia do not seem to end up languishing in the hoosegow for years while the INS looks for their paperwork.

In fairness to the INS, it has certainly been given carte blanche to abuse away. On top of the perennial nativist sentiment in the United States, any economic downturn can be counted on to up the anti-immigrant feeling. ("They're taking our jobs!" is the cry, as U.S. corporations keep dismantling factories and moving them abroad. Many of the same corporations also hire illegal immigrants here.)

And of course you can always find politicians happy to play to the crowds, stirring up anti-immigrant feelings for political advantage; that's an old dog that still hunts.

In 1996, in a triumph of anti-immigrant sentiment, Congress passed a new immigration law that even the INS admits goes too far.

The agency got almost a billion dollars for the detention and deportation of immigrants, making it the largest federal law-enforcement agency. It has 15,000 officers authorized to carry weapons and make arrests — more than the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration or Customs.

Before the law was changed, those who were deported had to have been convicted of a major felony.

Now the INS arrests people during job raids, at routine traffic stops, at airports when they return from abroad and even at immigration offices, where immigrants go to seek services offered to them. Immigrants going in to apply for citizenship have been rousted and deported within a few hours, without due process or a chance to consult a lawyer, even though the immigrants may have lived here for years, have families, etc.

The law also expanded the definition of a deportable crime — it now includes bad checks — and directed the INS to deport immigrants who are legal U.S. residents.

In a particularly vicious Catch-22, Cuban immigrants who have committed crimes (even crimes so minor that they merit only probation) are consigned to detention after they have completed their sentences — but they can't be deported because the United States has no diplomatic relations with Cuba. That's a life sentence without parole. But we, of course, will not regularize our relations with Cuba because Fidel Castro is guilty of human-rights abuses.

And now we have a case here in Texas that pretty much takes the cake. Thanks to The Dallas Morning News, the plight of Ablavi Haden of Togo has come to public attention.

Haden, a widowed mother of five who has two master's degrees, entered the country legally and was employed as a staff accountant by a Dallas business where her boss thought the world of her. Nevertheless, Haden has spent the last nine months in the Dallas County Jail because the INS concluded that she had changed addresses without notifying the agency and viewed her as a fugitive.

Haden has a photocopy of the letter she sent the INS notifying it of her change of address, and the Morning News found INS records referring to the address change. Haden had also received a letter from the INS reauthorizing her employment application, valid until Oct. 2, 1998.

Haden's immigration status was on hold. She had applied for political asylum, and the judge said he believed she was telling the truth about fears of returning to Togo: "Unfortunately, I don't believe you're eligible for asylum as I understand the laws of the United States." But Haden was allowed to stay while her case was under review; her lawyer says her case was in a protected mid-appeal status that prevents officials from taking immigrants into custody or removing them from the country.

In 1991, Haden's husband was killed by the notoriously repressive regime in Togo, and she believes that she has already been put on a hit list by the regime. She preferred to remain silent during nine months of incarceration rather than appeal for help for fear it would make her more of a target if she is returned to Togo.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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