Perilous Journey

According to Kurzban, the successful lawsuit had an additional effect. In the spring of 1980, President Jimmy Carter legalized the status of the 125,000 Cuban refugees who had arrived during the Mariel boatlift. Also affected by the beneficial change in legal status were 15,000 Haitian refugees who had arrived prior to October 10, 1980. Kurzban says the timing was no coincidence: "They knew about the lawsuit in Miami, they knew they were going to lose, and they knew they were going to be embarrassed. In addition, pressure was being exerted in Washington that it would appear racist and discriminatory not to include Haitians in the new status. The decision was made at the highest levels in the White House to include the Haitians."

The center's attorneys didn't have much time to celebrate their victory. By the spring of 1981, the new Reagan administration had instituted an ominous policy change. Asylum seekers were to be detained indefinitely pending the resolution of their claims. Not since Ellis Island shut down in 1954 had the government operated large-scale detention centers. In the past, only those aliens believed to pose a threat to national security or thought to be unlikely to return for their hearings had been routinely detained.

The Krome Service Processing Center, located off Krome Avenue where development sprawl meets swampland, was quickly overwhelmed with detainees. The government's solution: mass hearings and transfers to other parts of the country. Steven Forester recalls running into Ira Kurzban soon after the new policy went into effect. "He said, 'Steve, you'd better go to immigration. They're having hearings for 60 people at a time. Something crazy is going on.'"

Forester raced to the old federal building in downtown Miami only to be physically thrown out of court. Undaunted, he returned with a Creole interpreter and took to standing in public hallways, loudly announcing that the refugees had the right to an attorney and to appeal unfavorable decisions. "It was a farce," he remembers. "They literally moved refugees up back stairways instead of using the elevators just to avoid me."

Forester, Vera Weisz (another attorney employed by the center), and Bruce Winick, a law professor at the University of Miami, petitioned for an emergency order halting imminent deportations. "The order was served at the airport, with some 88 Haitians aboard a plane with the engines running. The government was deporting them that very evening," Winick recounts.

Although deportation was averted, the mass hearings continued. What's more, in July new courtrooms opened up at Krome. Forester found himself scrambling between simultaneously scheduled hearings. He would typically awake at 6:30 a.m. and hurriedly prepare motions, then he would rush to the Krome courtrooms and dart from one case to another. "It was really crazy," he recalls. "It was a marathon of physical stamina. That's why I was out there at Krome -- because I was this young, thin guy who could run."

When the prospect of indefinite detention failed to deter the Haitian boat people, the U.S. government tried a different tack. In September 1981, the Reagan administration signed an interdiction agreement with Duvalier that authorized the U.S. Coast Guard to stop and search any private Haitian vessels encountered on the high seas. All undocumented individuals were to be returned to Haiti. Not only was the agreement unique in U.S. diplomatic history, but its harshness was not prompted by any discernible migration crisis. At the time, Haitians were estimated to comprise less than two percent of all undocumented aliens living in the United States.

Haitians who managed to reach U.S. shores did not fare much better. Those lucky enough to be detained in Miami made their futile asylum claims in the chaotic atmosphere of Krome's courtrooms. Hundreds of others were transferred to detention facilities in Kentucky, New York, Texas, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Louisiana. None of those facilities was located near a big city, and it was almost impossible to find pro bono legal counsel in such remote locations, much less Creole interpreters who could explain to the refugees their rights of appeal.

Convinced that the out-of-state hearings were a sham, the center sued the INS. It argued that the refugees had been deprived of their right to due process because they were, in effect, being denied the right to counsel. District Court Judge Alcee Hastings agreed and issued an order prohibiting the INS from holding hearings for anyone not represented by an attorney. This order effectively blocked deportations from remote facilities.

In 1985 Forester left the Haitian Refugee Center (although he remained active on its board of directors) and was replaced as supervising attorney by Cheryl Little, who joined the center soon after her graduation from the University of Miami School of Law.