Wednesday, April 12, 2000

By SAM SKOLNIK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The fate of Seattle-area immigrants being jailed indefinitely by immigration officials will not be known until the end of the week -- at the earliest.

The Justice Department will decide within a couple of days whether to appeal a federal appeals court ruling finding the detention practice unconstitutional, according to an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman.

If government lawyers challenge the ruling, they could request a stay, effectively blocking the immigrants' release for now.

There are about 205 immigrants in the Seattle area directly affected by ruling, according to Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the INS' Western Region office based in Los Angeles.

These are people whose orders of deportation are final, and whose home countries have declined to issue them travel documents, she said.

The vast majority are convicted criminals.

In the past few weeks, 110 of the detainees have asked federal judges to be released.

They claim they have been detained unfairly, said Jay Stansell of the Seattle federal public defender's office.

Stansell said they will use Monday's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, prompted by the case of a Seattle man, Kim Ho Ma, to bolster their case.

Kice said 575 immigrants in total would be affected by the ruling, which applies to nine Western states and two U.S. territories.

The government claims the immigrants pose a danger to the public and should continue to be detained.

"They could get out tomorrow if the government didn't fight it," said Stansell, who represents Ma, "but they have fought tooth-and-nail in the past."

The Justice Department has up to 30 days to appeal the ruling to a full panel of federal appellate judges. If contested after that, the case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.