CHALLENGE TO ANTI-ALIEN LAW BEGINS

WASHINGTON - Twenty-one years ago, Joe Velasquez was arrested for
telling an undercover police officer where to buy cocaine. Velasquez,
a legal immigrant from Panama, served three years' probation, paid a
$5,000 fine and has not run afoul of the law since.

But his offense and a twist in American immigration law came back to
haunt Velasquez when he returned from visiting his mother in Panama
over Christmas in 1998.

Velasquez was arrested at Newark (N.J.) International Airport and held
for four months without bail at a county jail. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service ordered him deported to Panama, where he had
not lived since he was a child. Velasquez's wife, three sons and two
grandsons are all U.S. citizens.

"For me to go back to Panama at my age, to start over again, would be
a great hardship, more for my family than me," said Velasquez, 53, who
owns a sandwich shop in Philadelphia and is free on bail while
appealing his deportation.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a challenge
to the actions Congress took against legal aliens at the height of the
national anti-immigrant fervor in 1996. The legislation Congress
approved then required the deportation of immigrants convicted of
certain crimes, even if, as in Velasquez's case, the crime was
committed long before the statute was enacted.

At issue is whether Congress went too far in 1996 when it stripped the
federal courts of their authority to review deportation orders. The
justices will also consider whether legal immigrants can be removed
automatically for offenses committed before the provision became law.