Transcripts

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STEPHEN SMITH: 32-year-old Jose is a house painter from Guatemala. Alfredo is 20 years old, a high school student from El Salvador. Both men have been in Duluth about a week, staying with local members of the Sanctuary movement. Alfredo says he left his home in San Salvador because the army was killing friends of his who belonged to anti-government guerrilla groups. The army wanted Alfredo to identify other guerrillas he knew.

SPEAKER 2: I wasn't a guerrilla. And I wasn't a soldier too. But I have many friends who are guerrillas. And the army asked me for them. And they don't care if you are or not. But if you know somebody who are, they kill you.

STEPHEN SMITH: Jose says he was caught between the army and the insurgents in Guatemala. While hiking in the woods with his brother one day, Jose stumbled onto a supply of guerrilla weapons. He fled to the United States three times. Each time, he was caught and deported home. Jose spoke through interpreter Robert Turner.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

ROBERT TURNER: Before he took his walk with his brother, outside the University of San Carlos in the woods, he talked to the guerrillas a few times. They asked him to join up. He didn't want to. At the time, time he was outside the university, when he came across some weapons and I guess other things they didn't want him to see, that they shot at him. And they took off running and took the next bus out.

STEPHEN SMITH: How Jose and Alfredo got to Duluth is a complicated story. But in their separate journeys from the Rio Grande River to Northern Minnesota, both men somehow found themselves in the protection of the Sanctuary movement's Refugee Railroad. Now they're in Duluth, 150 miles from Canada.

Robert Turner is typing up the statements Jose and Alfredo will give to Canadian immigration officials. Turner is a Spanish teacher taking some time off to raise his infant daughter. As a member of the Sanctuary movement in Duluth, he's helped about 100 refugees, legal and illegal, prepare for the trip to the border. Turner says he wonders how he'd act in their shoes.

ROBERT TURNER: I've never really had to be a refugee. I've been a very lucky United States citizen. Certainly, I like to think that I could handle it as well as these people do because by and large, they're very calm, they have a lot of faith. I don't know if I'd have the same faith.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

STEVE O'NEILL: Thanks, Robert.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

STEPHEN SMITH: At noon, Sanctuary volunteer Steve O'Neill arrives to drive the refugees to Canada. O'Neill is a tall, wiry man with a copper-colored beard. He's a community organizer in Duluth. The trip north, past the dramatic cliffs and birch forests of Lake Superior, is made in a rusted, old Dodge Dart.

It's known as the Border Beater. And it's been donated to the Sanctuary group because the US Border Patrol has been seizing some of the members' cars in cases where illegal aliens were taken to Canada. It is a felony to harbor or transport an illegal alien. On today's trip, Alfredo is in the US legally. But Jose has no papers, he's illegal.

STEVE O'NEILL: Sorry, we're late. We're on our way. Adios, Duluth.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

SPEAKER 2: Goodbye and see you.

STEPHEN SMITH: Once on the road, Steve O'Neill will try to keep to the speed limit.

STEVE O'NEILL: With Jose's status of being undocumented, we're driving carefully. We're not going to make any unnecessary stops. And when we make stops, they'll be quick and out-of-the-way places. The police, I don't think are a factor. I don't think they're looking for illegal refugees. The border patrol occasionally will be on this road. And I'll be careful not to be obvious that we're doing this. But I've made this trip a number of times. We haven't had any problems on the trip up.

STEPHEN SMITH: While cars have been seized, none of the sanctuary members themselves have been arrested. But that's always a possibility. On this last part of their long journey, the refugees are usually pretty nervous. Jose quietly smokes cigarettes, while Alfredo listens to a tape player or sleeps.

About eight miles south of the Canadian border, O'Neill pulls off at a mobile home on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation. The woman who lives here allows the Sanctuary group to keep another car parked at the back of her driveway, this one even more dilapidated than the Dodge. The hood is crumpled like the bent back lid of a cat food can and tied shut with a rubber cord.

[BANGING]

[ENGINE STARTER WHIRRING]

O'Neill and the refugees push the old white Rambler into the road. They'll try shoving it to life with the Dodge. If it starts, the Rambler will make the final stretch to Canada. It's the Refugee Railroad's secret weapon.

[ENGINE STARTS]

The Rambler eventually fires up, but the back tire is flat. So the trio stops at a local gas station and uses a foot pump to inflate the tire.

STEVE O'NEILL: A little bit more. This is an old car. This is, I think, a '63, 1963.

SPEAKER 2: 1963?

STEVE O'NEILL: Si, Rambler American.

STEPHEN SMITH: Jose and Alfredo laugh nervously and cross their fingers. The white Rambler slides past the American border point without having to stop. It crosses the Pigeon River to the Canadian border station, arrival time, early evening. The Sanctuary group called ahead to warn Canadian immigration officials that Jose and Alfredo were on their way for preliminary interviews. Canadian immigration officials say that if a refugee is granted a hearing date inside Canada, the policy is to send the refugee back to the US to wait.

Tonight, Alfredo and Jose both get hearing dates for the following week. They're both sent back to the US until then. Alfredo was already legal in the US, so he's in no danger. But immigration agents on the US side won't tell the Canadians exactly what will happen to Jose. So Canada sends him back too. At the US port of entry, Jose is arrested as an illegal alien. The border patrol is on the way now to begin deportation proceedings. The 1963 white Rambler is seized. And Jose is handcuffed to a chair.

SPEAKER 4: We have to hold you here a sec. That too tight?

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

STEPHEN SMITH: Steve O'Neill is shocked at the move. He assumed Jose's Canadian papers would protect him. Of the hundreds of refugees taken to the border by the Duluth Sanctuary group, this is the first time one has been arrested. Jose sits silent and dejected. It's unclear what will happen to him tonight. If he's sent back to Guatemala, Jose says he could be killed.

Dean Hovey is an official with the US Immigration Service's district office in Saint Paul. He says the government knows that Sanctuary members like Steve O'Neill may be breaking the law by transporting illegal aliens to Canada. But with just 15 investigators for the district, Hovey says other aspects of immigration law take priority.

DEAN HOVEY: We have a very limited amount of resources. We could focus 100% of our resources on the Sanctuary movement, and we still wouldn't have a great amount of resources to focus. We have a three-state area, Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota, and have very few enforcement officers.

STEPHEN SMITH: Canadian immigration officials say refugees like Jose, who face potential deportation in the United States, are generally admitted into Canada immediately. This case may have been a mistake or may have been intended as a signal to the Sanctuary group. Canadian immigration laws are in flux.

Toronto immigration attorney Jeffrey Howes says new laws taking effect soon will deny refugee status to people arriving from a so-called safe country. Howes says the law is intended to stop the flow of refugees from Asia and Europe. How Canadian immigration will treat those from Central America is unclear.

JEFFREY HOWES: I think they will have trouble calling the US a safe country for Salvadorians or Guatemalans, for example. I think that will be very difficult for them to pull off. And everyone is watching very carefully.

STEPHEN SMITH: So your feeling is while it may be too obvious for them to do anything with this up front, they're laying the groundwork for closing the doors later on?

JEFFREY HOWES: I think that's a fair estimate, yeah.

STEPHEN SMITH: Steve O'Neill knows that he may have committed a crime by driving Jose from Duluth to the border. But O'Neill says it's the right thing to do. Because he blames US policy in Central America for the wars that Jose and Alfredo are running from.

STEVE O'NEILL: When you consider the price that people in Central America, including many of the people that we've helped, the price that they pay in the imprisonment, and the torture, and the deaths or torture of their friends and relatives, family. And then the pain of having to leave your homeland, the risk of being hassled by the border patrol seems pretty small compared to that.

STEPHEN SMITH: Another sanctuary volunteer drives from a nearby town to ferry O'Neill and Alfredo back to the 1973 Dodge down the road. They'll drive that back to Duluth, arriving about dawn. In the coming weeks, Alfredo will get refugee status in Canada. Jose will spend some time in jail. But he'll eventually be bailed out by a church group involved in the Sanctuary movement and kept in a house north of Duluth until his Canadian hearing date in December.

With the help of Sanctuary lawyers, Jose may avoid deportation long enough to make it to Canada. By then, it's likely that more refugees will overtake him on the refugee railroad to Pigeon River. This is Stephen Smith reporting.