VICTORY DANCE: A Cuban migrant reaches land Tuesday near the Ocean Reef Club on North Key Largo. He and two others waded to shore after jumping from their rickety wooden boat about two miles offshore FOR-CBS4
Posted on 05/07/2003 1:43:28 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Nearly three hours after throwing themselves from their rickety boat to stave off the Coast Guard, three Cuban migrants slogged through thigh-high water and into the mangroves off Key Largo on Tuesday.
The men had been pepper-sprayed after reportedly brandishing oars and weapons -- including a machete -- at approaching Coast Guard officers about two miles offshore.
A fourth migrant, too tired to stay afloat, allowed himself to be taken aboard a Coast Guard vessel after jumping overboard.
With rescue boats following and officers watching, his companions kept swimming, hoping to make it two miles to freedom.
Barefoot and wearing nothing but brief trunks, the trio gingerly picked their way across a bed of coral to the mangrove swamp ringing the affluent enclave of The Ocean Reef Club shortly before 6:30 p.m.
As the ocean gave way to shallow puddles, one of the men lifted his arms to the sky, pumping his fists with joy.
Under the wet foot/dry foot policy, Cuban migrants who reach shore are generally allowed to stay, while those interdicted at sea are typically sent back.
VICTORY DANCE: A Cuban migrant reaches land Tuesday near the Ocean Reef Club on North Key Largo. He and two others waded to shore after jumping from their rickety wooden boat about two miles offshore FOR-CBS4
FAMILY PRAYED
''All we could do was pray,'' said Juan Bomachea, granduncle of two of the men who made it to shore: brothers Alfredo and Javier Morales, fishermen from the coastal town of Caibarién in Cuba's Villa Clara province. Bomachea and his family recognized the men on television as all of South Florida's stations broadcast the frantic end of the journey.
The three spent about 30 minutes picking their way through the mangroves before reappearing on a main road inside the Ocean Reef development -- where they were promptly met by the Border Patrol.
''They gave themselves up as soon as they got out,'' said Border Patrol resident agent Cameron Hintzen.
The men, who were in good health, will spend the night at the agency's marathon station before heading to the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade. Typically, Cuban migrants are released after a few days at Krome.
But before retiring for the night, the three were to be interviewed by agents from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on possible assault charges against Coast Guard personnel, Hintzen said.
SPOTTED AT 2 P.M.
The men, spotted by a Coast Guard aircraft around 2 p.m., were approached about an hour later by a boat from the agency's Islamorada station, said Petty Officer Ryan Doss.
''When they arrived, the migrants waved oars and a machete and knives at the crew,'' said Doss. ``Pepper spray was administered and they immediately dropped their weapons.''
The men then jumped in the ocean.
''Once we have people in the water, we treat it as a rescue operation,'' Doss said. ``The last thing we want is to run the risk of someone drowning.''
The Coast Guard threw the men life jackets. The men tossed back the jackets, but later accepted them.
Hintzen said the fourth man gave himself up after growing too tired to keep swimming.
While his companions bobbed in the water for more than hour -- two of them sharing one pair of swim fins and all three refusing assistance from Coast Guard officers -- the fourth migrant sat with his hands bound behind him.
He was identified by Miami relatives as Jorge Parrado Martinez, who recently finished serving a 12-year prison sentence in Cuba after a failed attempt to flee.
Parrado, who is in his 40s, was still aboard a Coast Guard vessel late Tuesday, said Ana Santiago, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
OFFERED ASYLUM
Panama's Consul General Manuel Cohen said that his president, Ernesto Pérez Balladares, granted him the authority to offer asylum to all four men. He met with Parrado's relatives at his Coral Gables office late Tuesday.
Asylum would be conditional on Parrado having a clean record in Cuba, he said.
In Marathon, clustered around the TV, Bomachea and his clan shouted with relief.
The emotion was so great Bomachea's daughter, Sandra Rodriguez, felt her defibrillator -- which monitors erratic heartbeats -- give her a warning jolt. ''Everyone is screaming and happy, even though now they're taking me to the hospital,'' she said.
Bomachea said the men had twice before tried -- and failed -- to flee the island in hopes of joining their father, Alfredo Morales Sr., who arrived during the Mariel boatlift and now lives in Homestead.
The Morales brothers, both in their late 20s, had told family members they were frustrated with their living conditions in Cuba.
''They were being thrown in jail for any little thing,'' Bomachea said. ``If they got caught fishing for crab or lobsters, they were arrested.''
Herald staff writers Charles Rabin, Adriana Cordovi and Jennifer Maloney contributed to this report, supplemented with Herald wire services.
Before examining that, however, let's retire one particularly tired and self-contradictory "argument" against U.S. policy toward Cuba: The embargo is a convenient "excuse" for the Castro regime's failures.
At the minimal risk that a generalization like this creates, nobody who believes in (or at the very least understands) capitalism still holds that Cuba is an economic sinkhole because of U.S. foreign policy. As such, it is foolish to claim that the embargo is an "excuse" for the Castro regime's economic failure. This argument shifts blame to the Cuban people, for their implied stupidity. No émigré I've ever met believes their hardship resulted from U.S. policy. The embargo is an "excuse" only to the Left, for whose intellectual shortcomings I make no defense.
Everyone in Havana knows they receive one bar of soap per month because of decisions made by Castro, not Washington. To argue otherwise is to deny the Cuban people an "insight" most Americans take as common sense.
The most recent way to blame the United States for Castro's brutality is by criticizing the actions of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana. The argument goes that were it not for U.S. diplomats-invariably portrayed by the media and the Left (quibble, quibble) in C.I.A.-like terms-supporting pro-democracy forces in Cuba, Castro wouldn't have to hand out life sentences like candy.
This is an insidious form of blaming the victim, along the lines of a domestic abuse counselor inquiring, "Why didn't you stop complaining after your husband hit you the first time?"
If only those pesky Cubans didn't want freedom so badly and the U.S. government wasn't so willing to help them, Castro wouldn't have to play the stern father.
What appears to be an attack on American actions turns out to be a much harsher attack on those who support American values from abroad. Imagine blaming the Berlin Wall jumpers for forcing the guards to pick them off like tin ducks in a carnival.
Moral relativism is a valued tradition for the Left, but some on the Right also equate a principled policy decision with the type of restrictions on freedom implemented by Castro.***
The other solution is an American intervention and temporary occupation, for perhaps six years. In the '90s, there was an embargo against Haiti. When that failed, the Clinton administration sent an aircraft carrier. We restored a "leader" (or another dictator, depending on whom you ask). There was a catch, though -- the Congressional Black Caucus was in favor of that great military action.
People who know me well know that, for 40 years, I've been present for the Cuban cause and will always be. To reach these conclusions has not been easy, but I challenge anybody to give me another solution, logical and feasible. I'm all ears. Just make sure you speak loud enough for the Cuban opposition to hear you -- behind all that concrete.***
Boy, have we got some bad news for you fellows.
-ccm
They should be arrested - not granted asylum.
Heartbroken for the man too tired. Those twelve years in Castro's prison didn't help him, poor fellow.
usually no one notices
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The refugees were treading water for about three hours about a mile and half from shore before they could swim away from the current into the sandy shore. The first thing they did was to give themselves up to the authorities, and if they did anything illegal, they will be punished accordingly.
Under the Clinton interpretation of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Cuban refugees are only allowed to stay if they have “dry feet,” therefore Cuban refuges who have given themselves up only 20 feet from the beach have been sent back.
Exactly right!!!!!!!!
Sherri, two of the young men have parents living in South Florida; a third refugeee taken into custody was a US permanent resident until he had a boat mishap while fishing. He was picked up by the Cuban Coast Guard and sentence to 12 years in prison for having escaped to the US in 1983. His wife and children, who lived with him at the time in the US, were left without a husband/father since 1991.
I think you are still stuck in the Mariel boatlift in 1980
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