BOSTON, April 14, 1999 -- It began as a lover's quarrel. Yolanda Torres accused her live-in boyfriend Gerardo Ruiz Esposito of sleeping with another woman.

The two argued. He said Torres dug her nails into his chest. She said he pushed her against a wall.

On April 20, 1997, police took a cuffed Ruiz to jail. Both of them thought he would be out in a day.

But nearly two years later, Ruiz is still in prison, in Unit BN1 of the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, living alongside convicted rapists, thieves, and sexual predators.

And it is where Ruiz, a Nicaraguan citizen, will stay until he is granted asylum or deported - an unlikely possibility in the near future because Hurricane Mitch ravaged his country.

Ruiz represents a growing presence among prison inmates: Immigration and Naturalization detainees.

The law enables the INS to deport immigrants who commit even relatively minor crimes. But when the small-time criminals have no place to go, they end up languishing in prison.

Cubans whom Fidel Castro won't accept. Iranian nationals. People from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. And immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua.

A provision in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which went into effect in October 1998, also requires that undocumented immigrants awaiting political asylum hearings remain in prison - even if the appeal process takes years.

In all, there are 16,000 people detained by the INS in prisons throughout the country, according to INS figures. Within a year, that number is expected, by some estimates, to reach 24,000.

"INS is becoming a sort of new bureau of prisons,'' said Arthur C. Helton, an immigration and refugee law professor at New York University. "It's a senseless policy because it subjects individuals to arbitrary detention in violation of human rights laws.''

Not dangerous criminals

Anthony Keber, a Boston immigration attorney, said he has several Cambodian clients who have been detained in prisons for more than a year, even though it is clear they cannot return home because Cambodia will not accept them.

If they were dangerous criminals with long rap sheets, that would be fine, Keber said. But they're not. One of his clients was convicted of one offense - striking his girlfriend, a crime that, while troubling, does not make him a menace to society, Keber said.

Stories like these abound, such as the case of a Korean man who stole a car and might be deported back to a country where he has no family and does not know the language.

Timothy Howard was born Cho Tung Jo in Korea, but came to America when he was 5 to join his adoptive parents, Karen and William Howard, in Lakeville.

Now, at age 23, Howard has been held in prison since June 1995, awaiting deportation. Auto theft is a deportable offense, but a state judge later vacated the charge, court records showed.

"The basis of this order of deportation has been eliminated,'' his attorney, Hazel Inglis of New Bedford, said. "I don't know why they're not releasing him. Immigration is treating everyone the same, as if they were alien terrorists.''

His mother, Karen Howard, an adjunct professor of Holocaust studies at Merrimack College, said that sending Timothy to Korea would be worse than a long prison sentence: It would be like banishment to another world, because he knows no one there.

"It's shattered our family,'' Howard said.

The Cape Verdean community in Dorchester has been especially hard hit by INS detainments and deportations. Officials conducted a morning raid in mid-January, rounding up more than a dozen Cape Verdean youths with records of street crimes.

Some of the men had committed serious felonies, but others had committed minor crimes, including the case of an 18-year-old whose only crime was shoplifting a CD. After being detained for about two weeks, INS let him go, according to the Cape Verdean consulate in Boston.

"This is the legislation du jour,'' Jose Macedo, an immigration attorney of Cape Verdean decent, said of Congressional law that allows INS to deport people even for relatively minor crimes. "It's part of an anti-immigrant backlash. Congress has no sympathy for immigrants.''

Toughening the law

Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996, an amendment intended to toughen immigration laws.

The new law redefined the term "aggravated felony'' to include any crime dealing with theft, money laundering, violence, or drug trafficking in which a person is given a one-year sentence, even if it is a suspended sentence. With one conviction, an immigrant is deportable, even if that person has lived in the United States for decades.

It also required INS agencies to incarcerate any illegal immigrant, even if the person is applying for political asylum.

Even the Boston district office director of INS says the laws go too far.

"There's no question that some of those provisions are harsh,'' said District Director Steven Farquharson. "It has harsh consequences for people who have been here for many years. What's made it so onerous is that descretion doesn't exist any more. I would certainly like to have more discretion to look at individuals on a case-by-case basis.''

Farquharson said it bothers him that a person can be deported for committing one minor crime. But his hands are tied by Congressional law. And, because of the law, he said, INS workers have to scramble to find places to house the detainees.

There are 416 people being detained in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, said Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for the Boston Regional office.

Although immigrant advocates say there are hundreds of people who have been in jail for years, Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for INS in Washington, insisted that just is not true.

Bergeron said the average number of days a person remains in detention is 60, which is because most people do not have anything to base an appeal on - either they are here illegally, or have committed serious crimes. He said a majority of those being detained because they have committed a crime are also here illegally.

But Helton said the 60-day figure is skewed because it takes into account people who might have been detained for a couple of days and requested immediate deportation.

Many detainees are forced to choose among untenable options: Either accept deportation or remain in prison for however long it takes to appeal their case.

Fearing oppression

Gerardo Ruiz Esposito sneaked into the United States from Nicaragua, where he was a National Guard intelligence officer under the US-backed Samoza government. After the Sandinistas wrestled control away from Anastasio Samoza in 1979, Ruiz and scores of other National Guard officers were put in prison.

Ruiz remained in prison for eight years, and was released in in 1987. He fled the country, saying members of the new military regime had told him to either leave or die. After working in various Latin American countries, he crossed the US border illegally in 1990. He said a border patrol officer caught him and placed him in temporary detention in Harligen, Texas, a place where people could walk in and out of freely. He left, he said, fearing what would happen to him. Many Central American specialists say it is common for people such as Ruiz to flee, because they have come to associate police with oppression.

Ruiz applied for political asylum, nonetheless, and lived in Washington, DC, for many years, at the address he listed on his asylum form. Three years ago, he moved to Rhode Island because he heard there were better paying jobs. His job prospects soured, but Ruiz met a woman, fell in love, and moved in with her.

In a small conference room at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, Ruiz admitted he cheated on his girlfriend, Yolanda Torres. But he says he never hit her.

It was during a quarrel over his affair that Torres began punching him, Ruiz said. Torres could not be reached for comment.

Ruiz said as he held her arms, to keep her from punching him, his elbow slipped and hit her in the head.

In July 1997, a judge gave him a one-year suspended sentence and a year probation on the simple assault conviction. That is when INS agents began looking at his case, to see whether it was a deportable offense. When they found out he was from Nicaragua, living in the United States without documentation, it made his case murky. Ruiz cannot be sent back because of a temporary order banning deportations to Nicaragua, because of the damage caused by Hurricane Mitch. And his political asylum application had not been processed in the nine years he has been in the United States.

David McHaffey, an attorney with the Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project in Boston, said Ruiz could well be in danger if he is deported back to Nicaragua. Even though the government is now filled with Samoza party officials, Ruiz could be tortured or killed by those seeking retribution because he could have been responsible for the death of Sandinistas.

McHaffey said Ruiz could be in jail for years because of the backlog. He said he has processed claims for clients going back to 1990 that still have not been heard. "There's not enough people to process'' the claims, he said.

Helton said someone such as Ruiz should be placed on electronic monitoring instead of spending thousands of dollars to keep him incarcerated.

Immigration laws have to change, he said, otherwise the prison population will swell. It is costing taxpayers about $500 million this year, he said, an amount that is expected to increase rapidly.