Immigrants’ Rights Accord Challenged : Litigation: The INS files a motion to set aside the settlement because, it says, lawyers for migrants inaccurately described the agreement to the press.

Federal immigration officials filed an extraordinary motion Monday that seeks to set aside a settlement made with immigrants’ rights advocates two months ago because they contend that the immigrants’ lawyers inaccurately described the agreement in a press release and interviews with reporters.

The settlement would, among other things, allow detainees to meet with an attorney and require the INS to provide them with a detailed written notice of their rights when the detainees are stopped by immigration officers. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the 14-year-old case called it an important victory for people detained by the INS. Those lawyers and other immigration reform advocates hailed the agreement as a groundbreaking settlement.

Warren Leiden, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said that because of the agreement, “finally about 1.5 million people arrested by the INS each year will be able to consult with legal counsel at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.”

INS officials signed the agreement in June, and have since refused to comment on the importance of it. But in the motion filed by the government Monday, officials said that the agreement “compels few significant changes in INS policy or practice.”

The government argues that many of the points of the settlement merely codify existing practices by the INS. Since at least 1983, for instance, the government says that INS officials have routinely advised detainees of their rights, and “aliens arrested without a warrant have always been able to request to speak with an attorney before answering questions.”

Immigration advocates had said the agreement represented an important change in policy, in part because it forces the INS to specifically inform detainees of their rights with a new written document that is to be presented when they are arrested.

The comments of those advocates were quoted by the Los Angeles Times on June 10, and by the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Daily Journal the next day. The New York Times ran a similar story on June 12.

All four newspaper stories are mentioned in the Justice Department’s objection to the settlement, which was to have been made final last week but is now uncertain.

“Given the intensity and circulation of these inaccurate views, it is very likely that (the parties involved), and the general public, who have read or heard about the newspaper accounts, have been seriously misinformed,” the government’s brief states. “That situation is contrary to the public interest.”

The government’s new position on the settlement was welcomed by some of its opponents.

Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, called the government’s move long overdue and said it would help stop immigration advocates from overstating the legal significance of settlements.

But Peter Schey, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, disagreed.

“We think the government’s motion is utterly frivolous,” he said. “But beyond that I should not comment until after the matter is resolved.”

An Aug. 8 hearing has been scheduled in federal court.