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NEWS BYTES
The Department of State has advised that the cut-off dates for Indian and Chinese nationals in the second and third employment based preference categories will retrogress when the next State Department Visa Bulletin is issued.  This is apparently due to the large number of applications for adjustment of status that the INS has processed over the past month.  The Department does not know how far the numbers will backlog, but hopes to be able to make that information available before the next Visa Bulletin is published. [Just before publication, we have learned that backlogs are indeed in the April numbers – we will be publishing the Visa Bulletin on our site shortly] 
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Mariano Faget, a former INS employee who has been accused of spying for Cuba, has entered a plea of not guilty to charges of espionage.  It will likely be some months before the case is tried. 
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The Green Bay, Wisconsin, police department has found a new person to act as a liaison with the city’s Hispanic community.  The post was vacant for four months after the previous liaison was found to have fraudulently obtained work authorization. 
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A federal court jury has found three New York City police officers guilty of covering up one officer’s involvement in the beating of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.  Last summer two officers were found guilty of the assault, which left Louima in the hospital for over two months.  Family members and lawyers of the three officers convicted in the cover up say the jury’s decision was influenced by the recent acquittal of four officers who had been accused of murdering Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant.  
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An employment agency has pled guilty to charges of obstructing an INS investigation into the status of its employees.  Career Horizons, Inc., formerly known as AccuStaff admitted in the plea that it altered the information on the employment eligibility verification form, known as an I-9, before handing them over to the government as part of an investigation.  The company could be fined up to 0,000. 
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Lawyers for Major League Baseball pitcher Pedro Astacio are working to prevent his deportation.  He pled guilty to assault following an incident with his wife, hoping to avoid publicizing the incident.  He was given a deferred judgment, meaning that is he satisfied certain conditions, the state could not consider him convicted.  To the INS, however, this is a conviction.  At the time, he did not know of the immigration consequences of this arrangement. Indeed, he did not learn of them until the INS served him was a notice to appear at a deportation hearing at the end of February.  Astacio has withdrawn the guilty pleas and will go to trial. 
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More than 100 detainees in an INS facility in Queens, New York, are on a hunger strike in an attempt to draw attention to their situation.  Many of these people are asylum seekers, while some are in detention pending their deportation.  Hunger strikes are growing more common in INS detention facilities as a growing number of people are being kept in custody for months and even years at a time. 
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This week, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Commerce, State and Justice Departments, which oversees funding for the INS.  One topic of discussion was the failure of the Border Patrol to add 1000 new agents last year and the Administration’s plan to hire only 430 agents this year.  Part of the 1996 immigration law called for the addition of 1000 new agents for the next five years.  Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the chairman of the subcommittee, said that if more agents are not hired, the Senate might seek to cut funding for Border Patrol administration.  Meissner said the agency is doing everything it can to hire more agents. 
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Khalid Khannouchi, a world class marathon runner who wanted to be a US citizen in time for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia later this year, will not see his dream of running as an American come true.  Khannouchi, a native of Morocco, married a US citizen in 1996 and applied for a green card.  In 1997 he was interviewed, but then processing his application was delayed because the examiner working on his case was charged with accepting bribes.  Because of this delay, he did not become a permanent resident in 1998.  Despite the efforts of some congressmen to speed processing, the INS will not accept a naturalization application from Khannouchi until 2001, three years after becoming a permanent resident. 
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According to a Hillsborough County (N.H.) Commissioner, the Commission’s investigation into the treatment of INS detainees at the local jail will likely result in multiple indictments.  In January, over 200 detainees were removed from the facility following charges that guards had sexually assaulted female detainees.  
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Supervisors in the Border Patrol are making progress in their lawsuit seeking payment for overtime.  Last September a federal judge ruled that the government violated labor laws by not paying them overtime, and his decision on how much in back pay for overtime the supervisors are owed is pending.  Attorneys for the supervisors estimate that it could total 0 million.  Not all supervisors are eligible for overtime pay, but those who do not supervise the same agents every day are, a situation that has become more common as enforcement activities along the southern border have grown.