Washington Post Honduran Immigrants Wage Hunger Strike

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 24, 1998; Page C03

Five immigrants from Honduras, lying under a huge Honduran flag and sipping only water and Gatorade, have been holding a hunger strike in front of the White House since Monday -- and say they won't eat until the government stops deporting illegal immigrants back to Honduras.

The protesters, who began their hunger strike in Miami and then flew to Washington to draw greater attention, have been fasting in Lafayette Square to dramatize the plight of 80,000 Hondurans who fled to the United States in the 1980s because of conflicts in neighboring countries.

The demonstrators, one of whom was admitted to Washington Hospital Center yesterday after suffering convulsions on his 30th day of fasting, are demanding that Honduran refugees be given permission to stay in this country even if they illegally immigrated.

The U.S. government has granted a series of amnesties to illegal Salvadoran immigrants, and last year Congress offered them lenient conditions for becoming permanent residents. Lawmakers did even more for Nicaraguan refugees, offering them automatic residency if they came here before 1995. In contrast, the protesters said, more than 6,000 Hondurans have been deported in the last 15 months.

"We are not demanding special privileges. We are humbly asking for equality," said Nestor Mejia, 35, a Honduran welder from Miami, who was among 15 protesters supporting the fasters. "The wars destabilized our country economically. If I had to go back there, and earn $60 a month, how could I keep supporting my children and my parents?"

Trinidad Guifarro, 61, who has been fasting for 17 days, said Hondurans were America's allies, who "gave our territory to fight communism, and we suffered the consequences of the Cold War."

During the 1980s, Honduras was used by the U.S. military as a staging ground for guerrillas fighting a leftist regime in Nicaragua. Honduras also received thousands of refugees from El Salvador when Washington backed a military campaign there against leftist rebels.

But President Clinton has said his administration will give no special consideration to the Hondurans, telling their supporters in Congress in a recent letter that "there was no civil war or widespread violence" to justify their decision to leave their homeland.

Proposed legislation to help the Hondurans become permanent U.S. residents faces an uphill battle in Congress, where most members supported a 1996 law aimed at curbing illegal immigration.

"Even the Clinton administration has refused to allow illegal aliens from Honduras to remain in the United States," Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex.), chief architect of the 1996 law, said yesterday. "Clearly they should be returned home."

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who has introduced a bill to assist the Hondurans, visited the hunger strikers yesterday while other protesters played an accordion and sang in Spanish, lamenting Washington's treatment of refugees.

"We cannot complete the solution for Central Americans without including Hondurans," Gutierrez said, adding that he hoped to negotiate an agreement with Republicans, including Smith, who agreed to support residency for Nicaraguan refugees.

Unlike the Nicaraguans, who have presented a united front on this issue for years, the Hondurans began pressing their case only several months ago. Moreover, the different Honduran advocacy groups have feuded over personal and political differences, and no local Honduran groups have turned out to support the Miami protesters.