Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

If at first you don't succeed -- Cubans try again

Saturday, December 16, 2006

by: Laura L. Myers

KEY WEST, USA (Reuters): A group of Cuban boat people appeared to have made a return odyssey to the Florida Keys on Friday, almost a year after they were found clinging to a bridge piling and sent home in a deportation later ruled illegal.

Sixteen Cubans landed near Bahia Honda State Park in the lower Florida Keys early on Friday, said Monroe County Sheriff's spokeswoman Becky Herrin.

Deputies said as many as eight "might be" part of the group that was found on an old, disconnected bridge on Jan. 5 and repatriated by the Coast Guard. Federal officials were trying to confirm if that was the case.

But one of the original group said from his home in Cuba that seven other members of the group had made it ashore in Florida and expected to be released soon from an US immigration detention center.

"We know because the mother of one of them has talked to her family in Miami," said Alexis Gonzalez, a member of the first group of Cubans, in a telephone interview from his home in Matanzas, Cuba.

Under the United States' "wet foot, dry foot" immigration policy toward its communist-ruled neighbor, Cubans intercepted at sea are usually returned to Cuba, while those who reach US soil are generally allowed to stay.

The policy was tested when 15 Cubans, including three small children, were discovered clinging to a section of the old Seven Mile Bridge, built in the 1930s and now used as a fishing pier. A new bridge opened in 1982 as part of the Overseas Highway that connects the Florida Keys archipelago to the Florida mainland.

Since the Cubans landed on a part of the old bridge that was no longer connected to land, Coast Guard officials decided they were not on US soil and returned them to Cuba.

The decision sparked controversy among south Florida's Cuban exiles, who sued on the migrants' behalf.

US District Judge Federico Moreno ruled in February that the group had been repatriated illegally. The United States agreed to give visas to all but one of that group, a man who may have a criminal history.

Those who arrived on Friday were turned over to US Customs and Border Protection for processing.

Gonzalez said from Cuba that he had not known his former companions were planning to leave again.

"They were desperate and that's why they left. They had no jobs and were surviving thanks to help from their neighbors," he said.

He said he would wait for the Cuban government to allow him to leave, rather than attempting another clandestine boat trip. "I don't want to risk my life again in the sea, because I have the right to emigrate legally to the US," he said.

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