After prolonged ferreting by legal representatives in Mexico City, two American professors expelled from Chiapas, Mexico on March 24 have just learned that the ruling ordering them to leave Mexico, which banned return for two years, was not upheld after administrative review. Issued in DF on April 19th, the ruling was dispatched on May 4th, sent out by certified mail on May 17th, and then lost.

Katherine O'Donnell, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY and Jeanne Simonelli, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, were detained with seven other foreigners in the wake of the March 21st Zapatista Consulta, a nationwide referendum to gague popular support for indigenous rights issues. The two filed an immediate appeal and were subsequently allowed to depart in March, and then return and depart Mexico in June using special papers requested by the INM delegation in San Cristobal and authorized by the INM in Mexico City, the same office which had already nullified the expulsion order.

The lost INM April ruling stated that the expulsion order was clearly not supported by law (infundada) and was without sufficient motivation. According to lawyers, the INM recognizes that constitutional guarantees to due process under articles 14 and 16 of the constitution were violated. The San Cristobal office was ordered to reconsider the evidence, and either find sufficient motivation for expulsion, or determine that the case should be dropped. The two women are currently free to come and go as tourists in Mexico, but lawyers cautioned that "nevertheless you must be aware of the possibility of a new (formally well founded and motivated) resolution expelling and banning you."

Their finding comes just one week after the constitutionality of Chiapas expulsions was successfully challenged when a high court judge overturned the March 1998 deportation of activist Tom Hanson.

For full details of the March incident see http://www.ucr.edu/anthro/slaa/SlaaChiapasSimonelli.htm.