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.c The Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) - Two former foreign military officers accused of mass slayings in Honduras and Haiti were arrested on immigration violations in Florida and were awaiting deportation.

Juan Evangelista Lopez Grijalba, 63, was arrested Monday at his Miami-Dade County home after his temporary protected status as a refugee was revoked, Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Patricia Mancha said.

Lopez Grijalba was a colonel in a CIA-trained battalion in Honduras blamed for the abduction and killing of at least 184 guerrillas and political enemies in the 1980s, Mancha said. Honduran authorities issued an arrest warrant for him in 1996.

Herbert Valmond, 52, a former lieutenant colonel in Haiti, was arrested Monday at his Tampa home, Mancha said. Haitian officials issued a warrant for his arrest in 1998 for his alleged role in the massacre of 25 Haitian peasants four years earlier.

Valmond entered the United States with a six-month visa in 1996 but was later denied protected status, Mancha said. He was able to stay in Florida because he married a U.S. citizen.

An immigration judge ordered Valmond's removal on April 11 after an investigation into his actions in Haiti, said Bill West, the agency's chief of special investigations.

Lopez Grijalba came to the United States as a tourist in October 1998 and was later granted temporary protected status. The INS revoked that status Thursday after concluding a two-year investigation into his past in Honduras, West said.

Both men were being held Tuesday in the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County awaiting deportation hearings.

According to the INS, nearly 30 alleged persecutors from Angola, Haiti, Honduras and Peru have been detained in Florida and deported since last year.