INS TAKES HEAT OVER COLOMBIAN DRUG STING

In late June, hundreds of federal agents fanned out across six states
armed with arrest warrants, and prosecutors held a press conference to
announce that they had shut down some major drug-dealing operations
linked to the Colombian cartels.

What they failed to mention was that only 17 of the 159 people snared
in Operation Wild Card -- a sting that offered foreign nationals green
cards in exchange for drugs or cash -- were charged with drug offenses.

Now, with defendants housed in at least six county jails in upstate
New York, defense lawyers and even the judge hearing the cases are
questioning the fairness of luring immigrants into criminal behavior
with the promise of permanent residence.

"Many of these cases are being dumped for smaller pleas, but the
problem is the defendants will then be deported," said Terence
Kindlon, a criminal defense lawyer in Albany, N.Y. "It strikes me as
heavy-handed, inappropriate and an unfortunate sequence of events."

Since Congress passed tough immigration legislation in 1996, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service has aggressively pursued
deportation cases against criminals, even for relatively minor crimes
that might have been committed years ago.

Kindlon, who said his client is a family man who drives a cab in New
York City, is not the only defense lawyer who says he thinks the
government ended up snaring hard-working men desperate to win legal
status in the United States.

"I have a wonderfully nice guy, a house painter, who took a shortcut
but is getting hammered for it," said Alexander Bunin, the federal
public defender for the Northern District, who is representing 15 defendants.

Daniel French, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York,
said every defendant in the case, 23 of them from northern New Jersey,
attempted to bribe a federal official and that some were high-level
drug dealers.

Defendants traveled to Albany, where they met with a federal agent
posing as a corrupt INS official, and paid tens of thousands of
dollars or kilos of cocaine and heroin for the green cards. French
said the transactions were videotaped, and the agent made it clear
that he was running a risk because of the illegality.

"The defendants are in this case because they were willing to obtain
documentation illegally," he said. "I'm confounded when people try to
use the words 'otherwise innocent.' Maybe they have equity arguments
that they have families here, but, in and of itself, that is not a
reason for the government not to prosecute."

French, who noted the majority of defendants were in the country
illegally, said the case is proceeding smoothly. Twenty-one of the 112
people arrested -- 47 are still fugitives -- have pleaded guilty, and
another large group is poised to do so.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas J. McAvoy has ordered expedited
pre-sentencing reports, however, because he is concerned many of those
jailed may be sentenced only to time served.

In unusual public comments last month, McAvoy questioned the wisdom of
the operation in an interview in the New York Law Journal.

"A lot of these people are hardworking people and all they want is to
get a job or keep the job they have and maintain their families,"
McAvoy was quoted as saying. "They have kids here. They are working.
They have good jobs. They are the kind of people we want as citizens
of this country, and here we are throwing them back."

There has been a desperate exodus of Colombians to the United States
in recent years, as civil war in that country has intensified. They
have difficulty winning political asylum here, critics of the INS
argue, because the United States is supporting the government in its
war against leftist guerrillas.

Judy Golub, senior director of advocacy for the American Immigration
Lawyers Association, said she was troubled by the sting, given the
fact that people have such a tough time emigrating legally. The INS
has been embarrassed by lengthy backlogs, delays and errors in
processing applications.

"I think the INS should be spending its time getting its house in
order," Golub said. "It needs to make adjudication as much a priority
as enforcement."

Frank Monahan, a Jersey City lawyer who represents two defendants,
neither of whom was charged with drug offenses, said there appeared to
be sympathy for one of his clients when he made an application for
bail.

The client, Arturo Munoz of Newark, owns an appliance store in
Harrison, and Monahan made a case that he was simply a hard-working
man who wanted to stay in the United States.

"I had them crying for my client," Monahan said, adding that bail was
granted. "Both the judge and the assistant prosecutor were literally
emotional."

French said he had no sympathy for immigrants caught in the sting,
hinting that some defendants weren't as innocent as they seem. He
declined to discuss specifics of the investigation, but he suggested
that the word that green cards were available, allegedly from a
corrupt INS official, had gone out in drug culture circles.

Defense lawyers said prosecutors had been embarrassed by the weakness
of the sting and the subsequent criticism.

"They identified all these people as drug dealers with a broad brush,"
said Bunin, the public defender. "To be honest, I think they had
higher hopes for this operation than were realized."