Hurricane Mitch Puts Halt to Deportations by INS

In what the government called “a humanitarian response to the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Mitch,” the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said Friday that it was temporarily halting the deportation of Honduran, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran and Guatemalan nationals.

Deportations to those flood-ravaged Central American nations will be suspended at least until Nov. 23, said Bill Strassberger, an INS spokesman.

Citizens of the four countries who are scheduled to be deported in coming days will be notified that their expulsions have been put off, the spokesman said.

Immigrant advocates in Los Angeles, which has the nation’s largest concentration of Central Americans, urged an indefinite extension of the deportation ban.