Western Airlines Flies Salvadorians Out of U.S.

The U.S. government's controversial policy of deporting Salvadoran refugees may cause some problems for Western Airlines, a company that has up to now benefited from the deportations.

Critics of the government's policy argue that the refugees face violence when they are forced to return to El Salvador. "Numerous well-documented reports tell of torture and executions of some returnees," stated Frank C. Kiehne, interim director of the Church World Service's immigration and refugee program, in a recent New York Times op-ed.

Western enters the picture because the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, when it decides to deport Salvadoran refugees from Los Angeles back to El Salvador, routinely buys seats on Western Airlines for transporting the Salvadorans.

"We deal primarily with Western Airlines," said John D. Wilson, supervisor of deportation and detention for the Los Angeles district office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Wilson made his statement in a sworn deposition on January 29, 1982 as part of a pending court case on the deportation of a Salvadoran refugee.

The number of tickets reserved for the Immigration Service "will vary from day to day ... anywhere from 10 to maybe 20 seats, 25 seats," Wilson said. He estimated that in one random week in January "40 to 50%" of the seats purchased by the government were taken up by Salvadoran deportees.

"That's really a conservative figure," says Timothy Barker, lawyer for the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. Barker says the actual number is "more like 60-70% Salvadorans", or about 25 a month.

Western flies the Salvadoran deportees to Mexico City, where they are transferred to another carrier for final destination in El Salvador. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, according to Wilson's testimony and comments by Western, pays the company for the entire flight to El Salvador, even though Western only goes as far as Mexico City. "The night coach fare, typically used by the Immigration Service," to Mexico City, a Western spokesperson says, costs $164.00, with the added fare of $160.00 for passage to Salvador, for a total of $324.00 per refugee."

Western is the only U.S. airline that has regular flights from Los Angeles to Mexico City, a fact which insure that the company will receive U.S. government business.

"We are bound by regulations that we have to use a U.S. carrier first," Wilson said. "Western has to be our primary carrier."

Six church groups with a total of 135 shares in Western Airlines recently filed a resolution objecting to the company's transporting the refugees on the grounds that "Salvadoran deportees may face persecution, torture and assassination upon their return to El Salvador."

The sponsors of the resolution request the company "to issue a report by September, 1982 to all shareholders" providing information about its traffic in deportees, including "the number of persons transported, estimated revenues and net profits from this operation" and "criteria management would employ in considering continuation or termination of the contract."

"It's a violent operation," says sister Caroline Burgholzer, a member of the social responsibility committee of the Mercy Consolidated Management Program, one of the sponsors of the resolution. "We have a documented case of someone who was deported who then was tortured and decapitated."

Western has petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for permission to omit the resolution from the agenda of the annual spring shareholders meeting. "This proposal obviously deals with matters of United States foreign policy and general public interest, not with matters `significantly related' to Western's business," wrote Andrew E. Bogen, a lawyer for Western, in a January 14 letter to the SEC.

Bogen also claimed in the letter that "Western has no information as to the purpose of the travel or the nationality of the persons who use the tickets."

The sworn testimony of the Immigration Service officer John Wilson, however, suggests otherwise. Wilson was asked at his deposition whether "the airline agent would know the person is going to El Salvador?" "Yes," Wilson responded, pointing out later that Western receives "the travel document" showing "the person's name, date of birth, a photograph of them and identification, where they were born, and this would bear the seal of the Consul from El Salvador."

When Bogen, Western's lawyer, was questioned by Multinational Monitor on his claim that "Western has no information as to ...the nationality of the [deportees]," he responded: "that's what the company told me."

The SEC has yet to rule on whether Western can legally exclude the shareholder resolution, but even if it wins that round, the company may still be in for some heat. The church groups are considering "doing some public education" around the issue of Western's involvement, says sister Burgholzer, adding that there might be "some kind of boycott of Western Airlines."