Thursday, May 12, 2005

U.S. entry denial was 'nightmare' for parents
O.C. family of Indian couple sent back despite visas say immigration agents are working with inaccurate data.

By GWENDOLYN DRISCOLL
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The Indian couple flew for more than 20 hours to see their children and grandchildren in Orange County, arriving Sunday night - Mother's Day.

The visit lasted 45 minutes.

Then they were gone - escorted after a brief reunion with their shocked relatives in a departure lounge at Los Angeles International Airport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to a plane bound for India, 24 hours after their arrival in the U.S.

The cause: a dispute over paperwork. The effect?

"I cried and cried and cried," said Rajeswari Ratnam, 68, reached from an airport phone Tuesday in Delhi, of the detention she and her husband, N.S. Venkatratnam, 75, experienced earlier this week. "I begged them: 'I want to talk to my children at least.'"

Instead, she and her husband were kept in a locked room for 24 hours, where they said they slept on the floor and were accompanied to the bathroom by guards. Eventually able to speak to their children by telephone, they did not see them until minutes before leaving the country.

The couple's paperwork seemed in order. Both carry valid visas necessary to enter the United States - in their case 10-year, multiple-entry visas that expire in 2010.

At question instead were the computerized dates of the couple's past visit to the U.S. five years ago.

CBP Port Director Ana Hinojosa on Wednesday said officials were doing their job by returning the couple after immigration computer systems failed to find evidence of a visa extension allowing the earlier visit in April 2000 to be prolonged by six months.

"When there is a question we do afford the passengers the opportunity to provide information to contradict that," Hinojosa said. "In this case, there was not the supporting documentation."

Tough border scrutiny is essential in an age of terrorism, supporters say.

But immigration-rights advocates said such scrutiny - including detention of the Venkatratnams - might be based on inaccurate computer data.

The case comes one week after the Government Accountability Office issued testimony that stated immigration agencies such as Customs and Border Protection face significant management challenges, including establishing "accurate and timely" computer systems.

Although the testimony by Homeland Security and Justice Issues Director Richard M. Stana stated that some agencies were in the process of updating their case management systems, he noted "that information sharing technology for homeland security (is) a high-risk issue."

"It's abysmal," said Lucas Guttentag, national director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigration Rights Project. "As a matter of course, the Immigration Service has been incapable of adequately inputting, maintaining, and checking records."

The Venkatratnams' son Hirash Venkat, a finance manager for the Newport-based Pacific Life Insurance Company, blamed a computer flaw for Sunday's "nightmare," when the parents they came to greet with red roses and mangos were instead sent home.

"We were holding flowers, waiting in the line, the flight arrived at 4:45," Venkat said. "The clock turned five, six, seven, eight o'clock. We got really worried."

Around 9 p.m., Harish's brother Suresh, a program manager for Cisco Systems in San Jose, got a call. It was CBP requesting proof of his parents' previous visit to the United States in 2000.

The computer couldn't find evidence of the visa extension. The family, CBP said, had 24 hours to prove it existed.

"I'm racking my brains trying to think of why would I keep a copy of an extension request," Suresh Venkat said.

On the CBP Web site, foreign visitors are instructed to retain a returned portion of a white "I-94" card stamped with any extension dates as proof that they obeyed immigration laws. But few understand they have to keep past proof in order to make future trips, Irvine immigration lawyer Angelo Paparelli said.

Suresh searched his records to find the cashed check used to pay for the visa extension. But it was lodged in the records hall of the Bank of America on microfiche film.

It took until noon Monday to get a copy faxed. But there was a problem. The check's resolution, after being copied from microfiche and faxed, was poor - CBP officials couldn't read it, the Venkats said. It was also not proof the extension was approved, Hinojosa said.

With hours to deadline, Suresh tried another approach- his 2000 IRS records, when he took a tax deduction for the year his dependent parents lived with him.

The IRS paperwork showed his parents' "I-94" visa numbers. But when CBP ran them, the extension did not appear.

Faced with a lack of supporting documentation, Hinojosa said her officers were forced to expel the couple.

Immigration-rights groups said the Venkatratnams' paperwork could be missing for reasons as simple as a spelling or typographical error.

Transferring a name like "Venkatratnam" from a written application to a computer poses data entry problems, such as spelling errors.

Hinojosa said her officers went "out of their way" to check different spellings of the couple's names.

Other confusions arise because two federal agencies expedite foreign travelers.

Hinojosa said that her CBP officers - who screen visitors at the border - are dependent on the information they receive from the Citizenship and Immigration Service, an agency with a history of computer problems.

A 2002 Justice Department memorandum by then-Inspector General Glenn A. Fine noted that computer records of visa extensions were "not reliable" in "determining with certainty whether an alien who appears to be an overstay is actually an overstay."

The best guardian of immigration information, Hinojosa said, are the passengers.

"When you have a foreign (visitor), the burden of proving admissibility is on the passenger," Hinojosa said. "I think if this family had produced actual proof of the granting of an extension ...(we) would (not) have held them back."

In Delhi on Tuesday, Ratnam said she was still not sure what paperwork she signed during her detention.

"There were so many forms," Ratnam said. "They wanted us to sign everything. Because I wanted to play with my grandchildren, that was the only thing I saw. So, I signed everything."

The couple eventually discovered that they had signed a "withdrawal of admission" - a legal form that allows for both their removal and the cancellation of their current, multi-year visa.

Hinojosa said the elderly couple did not qualify for a "deferred inspection" - a grace period of a week or more in which the couple could stay until their documents were verified.

Hinojosa said such deferrals are only granted "when we have sufficient reason to believe that we have part of the documentation but they're missing a piece that we know that they can get."

Hirash Venkat has since learned that for a fee he can get a copy of the missing extension request - from the Immigration Service itself.

"Isn't that the most amazing and depressing thing?" he said. "If we had only had more time. But we were not given the opportunity."

Ratnam said she and her husband will not return to the United States.

"It's such a great country, such a developed country," she said. "It's shocking we've been treated so badly."

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