American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh 760 F. Supp. 796 (N.D. Cal. 1991), [1] formerly American Baptist Churches v Meese, is a settlement entered into on January 31, 1991, resulting from a class action against the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) and the Department of Foreign Affairs. (DOS). The complaint was filed in 1985 by a coalition of religious organizations, refugee mutual legal assistance organizations and numerous human rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the National Lawyers Guild. (NLG) Although originally two distinct groups of plaintiffs, various religious organizations involved in the Central American sanctuary movement and refugees were cited as a result of amendments to criminal laws previously used to prosecute these religious organizations, the complaint focused in particular on allegations of discrimination against Central American refugees in asylum procedures. According to them, this directly violates the principles of the Refugee Act 1980, which aimed to establish uniform criteria for the examination of cases where people fleeing political persecution and humanitarian crises are entitled to asylum. After five years, the colony provided temporary protected status (TPS) to many Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants, including de novo asylum interviews, deportation stays and work permits. The issue of discrimination was directly related to the recent passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, introduced in the Senate by Senator Ted Kennedy and signed by President Jimmy Carter.
The stated objective of this amendment was, inter alia, to meet the needs of persecuted persons in their country of origin and to provide them with assistance and opportunities to facilitate resettlement where necessary and possible. The focus was on humanitarian efforts to receive refugees already present in the United States, whereas previously much of the focus was on the concentration of refugee policy outside the United States. On the basis of this precedent and, in a way, on the test stone of its strength, the regime would use the arguments put forward in the Refugee Act to assert that the NTN violated the objectives of offering asylum protection to vulnerable communities meeting the definition of refugees. [9] Registered members of Class ABC are generally excluded by USCIS from being taken into custody. . . .