The Relentless Push toward Settlement: The Long Road toward the Landmark Asylum Settlement in the American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh Lawsuit

Announced on January 31, 1991, the settlement of the American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh (ABC) lawsuit transformed US refugee policy by reshaping the training process for asylum officers and guaranteeing new hearings for hundreds of thousands of Central American refugees. Five and half years previously, 77 churches, individuals and refugee aid organization filed a suit against the federal government alleging that it had impinged on their religious freedom and equal protection rights by indicting 16 religious and lay workers on felony immigration charges and denying thousands of Central Americans in the United States refugee status. For years lawyers for the government and the plaintiffs fought over discovery motions, depositions and motions to dismiss. In 1991 the government decided to settle rather than proceed with a costly and embarrassing discovery process. The settlement agreement ignored the religious freedom claims, the original rationale for the lawsuit, and instead offered new methods for training asylum officers and de novo hearings for previously denied Central Americans. For the first time, this paper examines through court filings, newspaper articles, personal letters and oral histories the six year transformation of the case from a lawsuit over religious freedom to an equal protection settlement that gave hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans and Salvadorans in the United States the chance to avoid deportation. It argues that the actions of an influential judge, and a few committed activist lawyers, as well as the refugee aid organizations that funded the plaintiffs, kept this case alive. This demonstrates again the power of individuals and small groups to shape and re-shape US immigration and refugee policy.