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- [ NATION, Page 29American NotesIMMIGRATIONChaos in The Valley
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- 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.
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