FEDERAL COURT Posada seeks release from federal detention Luis Posada Carriles has sued immigration authorities in a bid to win release from detention at a federal facility for immigrant detainees in Texas. BY ALFONSO CHARDY acha...@MiamiHerald.com
Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles asked a federal court Thursday to order immigration authorities to release him because they are violating a Supreme Court decision against indefinite detention and failed to submit evidence that he threatens national security.
Posada's 112-page writ of habeas corpus, filed by his Coral Gables immigration attorney Eduardo Soto, seeks a ruling from an El Paso, Texas, federal judge instructing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release the 78-year-old former CIA operative from detention. He is currently at an El Paso facility for immigrants facing deportation or awaiting asylum.
Soto's filing opens a new chapter in the latest Posada saga. That began March 26, 2005, when he sneaked into the United States from Mexico, Posada has said, with the help of a migrant smuggler who drove him past the border. Posada was detained by ICE agents in Miami-Dade on May 17 after he failed to appear for an asylum interview in Miami and instead turned up at a clandestine news conference near Hialeah at which he indicated he was about to flee the country.
Posada has been held in El Paso since shortly after his detention. An immigration judge there ruled that he could not be deported to Cuba or Venezuela but authorized ICE to expel him to a third country.
In a letter to Posada March 22, ICE advised the militant that he will be held in custody until his removal because he posed a ''danger'' to the community and a ''risk'' to national security.
`NEVER ACCUSED'
Soto said his writ shows the federal government has no evidence that Posada is a threat to the United States. ''He has never been accused of any crime whatsoever in the United States,'' Soto said.
Posada was charged in Venezuela in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner, but was acquitted by one court and then escaped from jail while the case was pending on appeal.
He was convicted in Panama in 2004 in connection with an alleged plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro but then was pardoned.
Barbara Gonzalez, a Miami spokeswoman for ICE, said her agency ``will be reviewing the lawsuit.''
The central argument in Posada's lawsuit is that ICE is violating a 2001 Supreme Court ruling against indefinite detention of foreign nationals who have been ordered deported but cannot be expelled because immigration authorities are unable to find a foreign country to take them.
The Supreme Court ruled in Zadvydas v. Davis that immigration authorities could hold a foreign national a maximum of six months while they sought a country to take him or her.
If they could not remove the detainee, then he or she had to be put on supervised release.
Soto argues that Posada has been detained longer than six months and that ICE has ''failed to provide'' evidence that he poses a danger to the community or national security.
EXCEPTIONS ALLOWED
However, the high court said exceptions to the ruling against indefinite detention could be made if detainees were deemed ``specially dangerous.''
The lawsuit contends that not only was Posada not a danger to national security but a loyal servant of the United States who advanced the national interest.
Among examples of Posada's services to the United States, Soto listed his work for the U.S. Army, the CIA and the Reagan administration during the contras' war against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
After Posada fled prison in Venezuela in the 1980s, he turned up in El Salvador as a member of a covert contra resupply network overseen by then National Security Council staffer Oliver North.
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