But Welcome Mat Is Disappearing : New Tide of Nicaraguans Swamps U.S. Border Cities

MIAMI — Ana Montez is living in a baseball stadium. She sleeps on a bunk bed in the visitors’ locker room. There are no crowds in the grandstands, just a tangle of other refugees edging for space in the enclosed ramps and tunnels.

Last week, Miami turned its Bobby Maduro Stadium--customary home to spring training games and rock ‘n’ roll shows--into a makeshift shelter for hundreds of Nicaraguans who have made their way to this city.

“Here at least I don’t have to worry about finding bathrooms and food,” says Montez, 31, a widow with two youngsters in tow. “It is better than the street. And after this? After this, who knows?”

Such words are a lament intruding upon a season of carols. Nicaraguan refugees are streaming across the border. Miami and cities in South Texas are vexed with a rush of homeless aliens.

Since late May, about 16,000 Nicaraguans have registered with the immigration office in Harlingen, Tex., near the Mexican border. And those already in the United States may be nothing compared to those on the way.

This month, about 1,000 have arrived each week--an extraordinary influx fed by the twin collapses of the Contra armies, which are nearly broke, and the Sandinista economy, not much better off.

“The word is out: people write home and say there are jobs here in Miami, that life is better, much better,” says Argentina Solis, another woman clinging to a lumpy bunk at the baseball stadium.

Until last week, the INS gave Nicaraguan refugees certain advantages. The newcomers simply filed for political asylum in Harlingen, had their papers stamped and received permission to go their own way. The asylum process could take years; they were granted work permits in the meantime.

The refugees then dispersed to favored cities. About 20% went to California, according to Duke Austin, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington. Most of the rest headed for Miami.

But now the INS is trying to dam the stream: Asylum applications are getting an immediate and cursory review in Harlingen. Those people with claims deemed “frivolous” are not granted work papers. There is a virtual ban on leaving South Texas.

“Very few of them have bona fide political asylum claims, anyway,” says Virginia Kice, the INS spokeswoman in Harlingen. “They’re just coming for the work, for the jobs.”

‘Part They Liked’

But slowing the influx will be difficult. “The Reagan Administration has been talking out of both sides of its mouth, and I think many Nicaraguans only heard the part they liked,” said Robert Boyer, a Miami immigration lawyer.

In July, 1987, as congressional support for the Contras continued to peter out, then-Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III directed the INS to encourage legitimate asylum claims by Nicaraguans. Unlike others, they were to be allowed to work while their cases were being processed.

That news was welcome to a war-weary people--some at odds with the Sandinista government, others simply looking for a steady job in a stable country.

In fiscal year 1988, which ended Sept. 30, the number of Nicaraguan asylum requests totaled 16,170, more than double the number of 1986. The INS estimates that each request covers an average of 2.3 people.

Welcome Mat Disappears

But suddenly the welcome mat is being yanked away, and to some the change seems hypocritical. America and its Contra allies attempted to destroy the Nicaraguan economy and now Uncle Sam wants no part of the consequences, they charge.

“The foreign policy failed; it created chaos, and now every Nicaraguan allowed across the border is a reminder of it,” says Maritza Herrera, a Nicaraguan activist here in Miami.

Can the refugees be deterred, anyhow? “I really question whether the INS can pull it off,” says Father Richard Ryscavage, an immigration expert with the U.S. Catholic Conference.

Many now warn Nicaraguans at the border not to register at Harlingen: simply to proceed by bus to Miami. Why get bottled up in the Rio Grande Valley?

Anyway, Miami is quite a lure, home to an estimated 100,000 Nicaraguans since the Somoza regime fell in 1979. There is a support system of wealthy businessmen and professionals. One of the city’s most popular steakhouses is owned by the Somoza family itself.

Until recently, this established Nicaraguan community was able to absorb the new arrivals. Families doubled up. Employers expanded payrolls.

Hundreds Pass By

Only in the last few months have the refugees become a visible problem. Private shelters hastily opened. Hundreds passed through the well-intentioned House of Love and Hope, nothing more than an overcrowded firetrap.

Last week, city and county officials joined forces to move the refugees into the baseball stadium. The shelter is shared with other homeless people. All food and clothing have come from donations.

“The community has opened its hearts,” says Janet Gavarete, executive assistant to the city manager.

The greater Miami area is nearly half Latino, primarily of Cuban descent and stridently anti-communist. Anyone deserting the Sandinista government is looked upon with favor.

At a Wednesday meeting, local politicians planned more aid for the Nicaraguans. When a group of non-Latinos protested that Miami’s government was being too accommodating, the vote-conscious officeholders brushed them aside.

“If we turn our back on (the Nicaraguans), then we are not American citizens,” said County Commissioner Sherman Winn. “We are not people who live by the Statue of Liberty.”

Los Angeles has yet to experience quite such a surge of Nicaraguan refugees. In Texas, on the other hand, the problem is a woeful mess.

Hundreds are homeless in Brownsville. “It’s like a movie about the end of World War II,” says Father Mike Seifert, associate pastor at Our Lady of Assumption Church. “Families are camped in the streets. Tell me what happens when we get the next cold wave.”

Homilies at Mass always include the passage from Luke: “Let the man who has two tunics share with him who has none.”

Seifert says: “Our parishioners have been great, but how much can they give? They’re poor themselves.”

In the past, most refugees were sheltered at the Catholic-run Casa Oscar Romero. But this sanctuary on Brownsville’s outskirts holds only 200 people, and during recent nights it could have been filled five times over.

‘Society Knows!’

“We think we are moral in this country, but we really aren’t,” says Sister Juliana Garcia, the co-director. “INS knows about this; society knows! No one wants the responsibility.”

Condemned buildings like the Amber Motel have been overrun with refugees, squatting amid the shattered glass and broken wallboard. Some cheap hotels rent rooms for $50, then allow dozens of people to share.

Neither Brownsville nor Cameron County has yet to cope with the effects of the new INS restrictions on travel. “We just don’t have any facilities for these people,” says D. J. Lerma, the county’s chief administrator. “I don’t know what the solution is.”

Joe King, who owns a Brownsville printing business, has started a group called the United We Stand Committee. He wants the aliens rounded up and pushed off the street.

“We’ve got them coming out of our ears,” he says. “There’s a passing parade all the time, six going one way, six the other. The federal government let them in; they ought to get them out.”

The streets are also filled with the unscrupulous. “Lawyers” operate out of their cars or under a shade tree, separating the refugees from their final dollars in return for help in filling out the political asylum forms.

Luis Sevilla, who speaks no English, paid $25 for expert advice. Question 31 asks: What do you think would happen to you if you returned?

“Get killed,” his “lawyer” penciled in.

Ana Montez, the widow in Miami with her two children, purchased no such assistance. By the time she crossed the border into Texas, the $1,500 she had started with in Managua was gone.

About a third went to bribe the border guards along the bus routes through Honduras and Guatemala. Another $500 was stolen in the bathroom of a Mexican bus station by immigration officials, or at least men who dressed that way.

The rest of the money was paid to a “coyote,” who smuggled her and her children across the Rio Grande. The man would not permit them to carry along their small satchels of clothing and keepsakes.

Once she was in Brownsville, Montez borrowed money for the bus ride to Miami. Things will be better there, she reasoned. “I trust in God to keep a roof over us,” she says.

And it is a solid roof, slate gray on the outside and enormously high to keep stray baseballs from escaping into the street.

Staff writer Laurie Becklund and researcher Lorna Nones contributed to this story.