The State - News from Feb. 3, 1985

U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston denounced the federal government’s indictment of 16 church workers in Tucson who were providing sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. Cranston, speaking to the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers’ Assn., said the indictment was “action one might expect from the Communist government of Poland or the apartheid government of South Africa, not the government of the United States.” Cranston charged that the Reagan Administration refuses to recognize the immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala as political refugees “because doing so would be tantamount to admitting that death squads and terrorism exist there.”