Immigration Reform

Lilliam Portillo came to America in 1985, when she was just 17 and both her Nicaraguan homeland and her future were clouded with gun smoke. The Sandinista government was embroiled in a bloody civil war with the U.S.-backed Contras, and much of Central America was in turmoil. Along with tens of thousands of her compatriots, Portillo was welcomed as a refugee by the Ronald Reagan administration, and she settled into Miami's thriving Nicaraguan community.

A sweeping immigration law designed to shore up the nation's borders and expedite deportations took effect here Tuesday at 35 minutes past midnight after judges, lawyers and advocates battled into the night over its implementation. In Los Angeles and elsewhere, immigrants awoke baffled and scared as rumors of mass deportation swirled in their circles.

Mexican Ambassador Jesus Silva Herzog said Thursday that U.S.-Mexican relations had reached a historic high point of good feelings two months ago but have since deteriorated so much that they must be repaired before President Clinton visits Mexico in early May. The ambassador insisted that the president is still considered a friend of Mexico and will be welcomed there.

Donald Vega is a quiet, soft-spoken young man with a rapidly growing talent for playing jazz piano. Ask him what is most important in his life, and he replies, "I just love jazz. All I want to do is play as much of it as I possibly can." He does precisely that so well that he has received a string of honors in the past few years, ranging from the $5,000 Music Center Spotlight Award in 1991 to the 1995 L.A. Jazz Society New Talent Award.

Concluding a long legal battle, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and civil rights attorneys based here unveiled an agreement on Tuesday designed to ensure that thousands of unaccompanied minors taken into INS custody each year are treated humanely and are quickly reunited with their families.

A ruling-party legislator called for a Mexican boycott of American goods. A leftist lawmaker urged the Mexican government to declare President Clinton persona non grata--just weeks before the U.S. leader's scheduled visit here. And in a rare show of nonpartisanship, all four parties in Mexico's Congress roundly condemned a tough new U.S.

Just hours before tough new immigration restrictions were to go into effect today, a federal judge on Monday delayed the law's implementation until Saturday because he said the federal government had not given adequate notice to those targeted by the crackdown. Although the ruling delays the law on technical grounds for just four days, the immigrant rights' groups who won the postponement said they would now move to challenge some of the law's key provisions. In his ruling, U.S.

The federal government unveiled long-awaited guidelines Tuesday that could allow tens of thousands of physically and mentally disabled immigrants, many of them in Los Angeles, to become U.S. citizens without passing English and U.S. civics tests. The new rules, more than two years in the making, come as 500,000 elderly and disabled noncitizens nationwide--40% of them in California--face a cutoff this summer of federal Supplemental Security Income benefits.

The welfare and immigration overhauls passed by Congress last year do not give the Wilson administration the authority to implement Proposition 187 provisions bolstering cooperation between the INS and local government agencies, a federal judge ruled Monday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Mariana R.

A divided City Council voted Tuesday to aggressively take a front-line role under a new federal law that allows local police to be "deputized" as immigration officers--a move some critics fear could chill relations between police and minorities.