Dallas Morning News
By Dianne Solis
August 24, 2018
A key question is whether Vasquez lied on his naturalization application, which was enlarged on a courtroom monitor: “Have you EVER been arrested, cited or detained by an law enforcement officer (including INS and military officers) for any reason?”
Turin, who once worked as an interpreter, attacked translations of Spanish words during the trial. He honed in on differences among concepts of detention, arrest and charge.
“The concept of whether he was detained is, at best, ambiguous,” Turin said.
Meanwhile, his client, a compact man with closely cropped gray hair, sat at a table with little expression. Family members were seated in courtroom benches, but his wife walked out of the chambers several times, looking upset.
Vasquez testified that he thought the question on the naturalization form applied to being arrested inside the United States. He admitted to three traffic tickets in the Dallas area on his citizenship application.
Pressed by Department of Justice prosecutors during the trial, Vasquez said he had been “investigated” for his role in the September massacre and taken to military quarters in El Salvador. But the former military officer said he didn’t consider that a detention or an arrest.
Vasquez repeatedly said through a court interpreter that he was not detained or jailed in El Salvador. Instead, Vasquez said he was held in military quarters during an investigation of the San Sebastian killings but that he was able to roam about and go to the gym and eat at the mess hall.
Department of Justice prosecutor Anthony Bianco asked, “Didn’t the civilian court issue you a warrant for detention, an order to hold you?”
Vasquez responded, in Spanish, through an interpreter, “No, I was under investigation.”
Much of the trial focused on Vasquez’s role in the massacre. It cut to the question of whether he had the “good moral character” necessary to become a U.S. citizen. Generally, the requirement of good moral character covers a period of five years prior to taking the oath of citizenship.
But under certain circumstances, such as participation in extrajudicial killings or acts of torture or Nazi persecution or genocide, a permanent bar would apply. Extrajudicial killings are defined by the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 as a deliberate killing not authorized by a court that provides judicial guarantees recognized as “indispensable by civilized peoples,” according to the original complaint against Vasquez.
Department of Justice prosecutors argued that Vasquez participated in extrajudicial killings and was barred from U.S. citizenship because of that.
Violence and Exodus
El Salvador, a country the size of Massachusetts, was a top recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the 1980s. That aid brought with it greater scrutiny, especially over human rights abuses, according to testimony from the prosecution’s key expert, Terry Karl, a professor emeritus in Latin American studies at Stanford University.
During the bloodshed of the ’80s, a fifth of the population fled the country — mostly for the U.S., Karl said. About 75,000 people died in the war.
Scrutiny of the violence led to several investigations, including one by a United Nations-backed truth commission.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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