Central American Parliament Protests U.S. Deportations

Centr-Am News, XXVI
Week of Sept. 13-19, 1998

[Centr-Am News is produced weekly by Toby Mailman and is distributed by the Weekly News Update on the Americas free to Update email subscribers who request it. Editorial questions or comments should be addressed to Toby Mailman c/o the Update at <wnu@igc.org>.]

Members of the Central American Parliament recently signed a letter which they later presented to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, protesting the deportation of vast quantities of Central American immigrants from the U.S.

Marco Antonio Solares, president of the Parliament, said on September 13 that the Parliament has taken "concrete actions" to show their "indignation" at the U.S.'s behavior. He said that in the last few months some 40,000 Central Americans have been deported from the U.S. He said this shows that President Bill Clinton was not fulfilling his May 8, 1997 promise to stop the deportations.

According to the news agency Amarc-Pulsar, the largest number of Central American immigrants deported from the U.S. are Mexicans, followed by Hondurans. The agency reports that most are undocumented, but that recently some who have their papers in order have been deported for minor crimes such as traffic violations.

Honduran Foreign Minister Fernando Martinez said he will go to the U.S. on September 23 to try to explain to Clinton and the U.S. Congress why Hondurans leave their own country and immigrate to the U.S, and to remind them that Honduras has always worked cooperatively with the U.S. government. (Agencia Informativa Amarc-Pulsar, 9/14/98; La Prensa on the Web from AFP, San Pedro Sula, 9/14/98)