Carter Orders A Cuban Cutoff

But the refugees keep coming

The twisting line looked endless. Women fainted, even screamed in hysteria, as the hot sun and high humidity baked the seedy, aging airbase at Opa-Locka, on the outskirts of Miami. Nevertheless, the line kept growing. Finally, it stretched to contain some 10,000 people, all waiting to get a simple but cherished piece of paper. They called it a planilla (little plan), a Government form on which they could list the relatives in Cuba with whom they hoped to be reunited.

The push for the slips of paper was so frantic that Army paratroopers had difficulty maintaining order. Yet the sense of urgency was well founded. Jimmy Carter had just taken strong steps to end the chaotic flow of refugees across the Florida Straits in dangerously crowded boats, but he had emphasized that his celebrated "open arms" policy of the previous week would still apply to close relatives of Cuban Americans already in the U.S. They could come to America, Carter said, if Fidel Castro would agree to let U.S. officials screen the would-be exiles and allow them to board American passenger vessels and chartered airliners for safer passage across the straits. First, the U.S. had to know just which of the estimated 250,000 Cubans who have applied for exit visas actually have close kin in America. The crush at Opa-Locka was to place names on that vital list.

Beyond the near panic in Florida's large Cuban-American community, Carter's sudden crackdown on the flotilla chugging between Key West and Castro's designated embarkation port of Mariel produced other uncertainties. By seizing 113 boats by week's end and threatening boatowners with fines of up to $50,000 and prison terms of up to ten years, the Administration had effectively stopped the sailing of boats out of Key West. Yet some 1,500 American craft still lay in Mariel, capable of carrying an average of 45 refugees each--a potential capacity of 67,500, which is even more than the roughly 50,000 refugees already being processed at such centers at Opa-Locka, Florida's Eglin Air Force Base and Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.

Under Carter's order, relayed via radio to the boat skippers in Mariel, the American boats were supposed to return to Key West without bringing any passengers. But returning pilots told harrowing tales of being forced by Cuban soldiers to take on refugees selected by Castro's government--often leaving behind relatives of the Cuban Americans who had paid for the trip. The captains were in a quandary. Some said that the people who had chartered their boats threatened their lives if they tried to leave empty. At the same time, the Cuban government threatened to levy $20,000 fines if the captains refused to pick up refugees. Then, when the ships returned to Key West with a load of refugees, the U.S. handed "intent to fine" citations to the skippers and posted Government seizure notices on the vessels. Protested one mate on a shrimp boat: "This man Carter tells us we can go over there and then tells us we can't. I wish to hell he'd make up his mind."

The zigzags in Carter's Cuban refugee policy were understandable, if not exactly admirable. The Administration had tried to get tough by threatening fines against the refugee-carrying boatmen when the exodus first began. But the number of exiles exceeded all expectations, and the frenzy it created among some 800,000 Cuban Americans made it seem impractical to block the exodus. Admitted Presidential Assistant Jack Watson, who is coordinating the ten agencies involved in handling the refugees: "We decided then it would be counterproductive to enforce the laws." But when Castro kept dumping criminals and derelicts into the American boats, along with the legitimate refugees, many of the Cuban Americans were appalled. Contended Watson: "Castro convinced Cuban Americans that they were being emotionally toyed with."

By last week Carter felt the Cuban Americans would support an end to the ragtag boatlift. Beyond close relatives, he cited three other groups who would be entitled to come to America: 1)the roughly 11,000 Cubans who had rushed into the Peruvian embassy in April to seek visas, touching off the mass exodus; 2) some 380 who are still living in the former U.S. embassy building in Havana, after being attacked by Castro strongmen earlier this month; 3) "political prisoners who have been held by Castro for many years." But not all Cuban-American leaders were pleased by this third switch of policy. Protested Antonio de Varona, president of the Cuban Patriotic Junta, a coalition of exile groups: "The President should have done all this three weeks ago. Now it plays right into Castro's hands. He'll continue to play games with us."

Castro seemed to be doing just that. He made no reply at all to Carter's air-and sealift offer, and there was great doubt that he would ever permit the U.S. to pick and choose among the people he was willing to deport. Declared the Cuban newspaper Granma: "Carter governs in Florida, but in Mariel, Cuba governs." The newspaper even claimed that the existing boatlift from Mariel to Florida was "the safest, most efficient one in the world." More than 20 Cubans have died in the journey so far, including three last week who had crowded with 27 others into a small cabin on the 36-ft. cruiser Sunshine. Two of them died of suffocation, and one from engine exhaust fumes.

The continuing storm over the Cuban refugees stirred up a related controversy over the Administration's treatment of Haitians who have also fled by boat from their poverty-stricken homeland. Senator Edward Kennedy, Carter's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, convened his Senate Judiciary Committee to assail Carter's handling of the whole refugee problem. But he aimed his sharpest barbs at what he considered the Administration's less hospitable attitude toward the black Haitians, asking: "Does the open arms the President talked about include the Haitians or doesn't it?"

Monsignor Bryan Walsh, director of Catholic Charities in Miami, testified at the hearing that some 15,000 Haitians already in the U.S. have been waiting for up to seven years to know whether they can stay as political refugees. So far, he said, only 50 have been granted that status. Actually, Immigration officials estimate that during the same period, perhaps as many as 30,000 Haitians have slipped into south Florida in small boats, although many have not filed formally for admittance.

Most of the Haitian boat people live in northeast Miami's "Little Haiti," working as maids, dishwashers, gas-station attendants and in other unskilled jobs. The U.S. has so far refused to regard them as political refugees, though their reasons for leaving Haiti sound similar to those of the Cuban refugees; both groups cite political persecution and extreme poverty. Carter said he was "greatly concerned" about the Haitians and had ordered federal agencies to "treat the Haitians in the same exact humane manner as we treat Cubans."

Yet Cuba remained the most urgent cause of worry. The State Department ordered 17 of 20 remaining staffers and their dependents out of Havana, at least temporarily, as Castro whipped up anti-American sentiment before staging a mass rally in the streets of Havana on Saturday. While speakers heatedly denounced the U.S., the crowd relished the rhetoric but refrained from attacking the former U.S. embassy building--the last significant symbol of official American representation in Havana.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.