Five Cubans Make It To U.S., Boy Left Behind On Boat

KEY WEST, Fla. -- An incident in the Florida Keys Tuesday afternoon is already reminding some people of the Elian Gonzalez controversy.

The Coast Guard said that five Cuban refugees made it to shore. But a child left behind on the boat the refugees arrived on may become the focus of a new immigration controversy.

According to Coast Guard members, a "good Samaritan" came across a 21-foot boat that had run out of gas just off Key West. Those towing the boat notified the Coast Guard.

While Coast Guard members were helping to tow in the boat, they said that they checked and found that the only two men who they knew were aboard boat had Florida drivers' licenses.

The boat was towed in to Key West, but when it got close to shore, the Coast Guard said that five men came from below deck, and jumped into the water and made it to shore.

That boy, along with the two other men who were on board, were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Under current immigration policy, those who made it to shore may be allowed to stay, but typically anyone stopped while still on water will be returned to Cuba. In recent years, the immigration policy has been a source of increasing controversy in South Florida.

I remember when I first saw that picture I thought it was a joke, that it was doctored somehow. When I learned it was for real it made me sick. That picture sums up 8 years of Clinton, Gore, Reno and the gang. Oh yeah, also pictures of Waco burning. I wonder, if Waco had happened during a Bush administration, do you think Amnesty International would have wanted to try him for war crimes against humanity? But since it was during their guy Bill's administration the strategy of killing the children to save them was O.K. Abortion is O.K. with those liberal types too, so maybe killing children isn't that big a deal, either.

Social tension reached a peak on August 5, 1994, when several hundred (by some estimates more than a thousand) people rioted in a seafront Havana district. Videotape footage of the event showed rioters looting shops, battling police, and shouting anti-government slogans. This was the first major civil disturbance to take place in Havana since the consolidation of the regime in the early 1960s. Although the police regained control of the situation in a matter of hours, Cuban officials later admitted that they were badly shaken by the disturbance. Appearing on state-run Cuban television, Fidel Castro declared that Cuba would no longer prevent "illegal" departures from the island. During the next several weeks, tens of thousands of people congregated on the northwestern coast of Cuba seeking opportunities to emigrate from the island by sea. During August and early September, the United States Coast Guard intercepted more than 30,000 people in the Florida Straits attempting to flee Cuba on homemade rafts. A large number of empty rafts were also found at sea, suggesting that several hundred (by some estimates several thousand) people may have drowned while traveling on unseaworthy vessels.

Responding to the uncontrolled mass exodus and seeking to curb unsafe departures by raft, on August 19 the Clinton administration announced that Cubans intercepted at sea would no longer be granted automatic political asylum in the United States, but would instead be given safe haven at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The flow of refugees continued unabated until September 9, 1994, when the Cuban and United States governments reached a migratory agreement to stem the exodus. In the September 9 agreement, Cuba agreed to use mainly "persuasive" means to prevent unsafe departures in exchange for United States approval of 20,000 visas annually to legal Cuban "migrants" (despite Cuba's commitment to employ nonviolent means to avoid departures, "attempted illegal departure" remains a felony carrying a two- to six-year prison sentence). The United States in turn would adopt a "wet feet vs. dry feet" policy toward Cuban refugees. Hereafter, Cuban refugees who make it to U.S. shores would be released to family and relatives in the United States, whereas those intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard would be immediately returned to Cuba unless a very strong claim for political asylum could be made.

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Incident May Reignite Controversy Over Immigration Policy