INS detains Honduran Jose Alfredo Amaya

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

Miami Herald, June 23, 2001

INS detains another accused violator of human rights

by Alfonso Chardy

Pressing their campaign to deport alleged human rights abusers, immigration
agents on Friday arrested a former Honduran military officer who purportedly
participated in the harassment and abduction of government opponents.

José Alfredo Amaya, 42, was taken into custody for deportation proceedings,
said Rodney Germain, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service. Justice Department sources familiar with the arrest said Amaya was
picked up at his home near downtown Miami.

Amaya's arrest came on the heels of the INS detention Thursday of former
Haitian Army Col. Carl Dorelien, who was arrested recently in Port St.
Lucie.

Amaya raised to 27 the number of alleged human rights violators detained for
deportation since the INS launched its "persecutor program" last year. He
is also the second Honduran officer detained by the INS. The first was Juan
Angel Hernández Lara, who was held last year.

A third Honduran officer, former Gen. Luís Alonso Discua, was forced to
return to Honduras from Miami-Dade County in February after the State
Department revoked his diplomatic visa. Discua and Hernández Lara were
members of Battalion 3-16, a CIA-trained military intelligence unit
implicated in the assassinations of 184 people.

The sources said Amaya told immigration officials that he took part in
operations to harass and abduct members of farmworkers' groups in the 1980s.
 
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