Libre at Last! Libre at Last!

The first of 1,800 Cubans jailed in Atlanta go free

The two men, clutching their release papers and a few meager possessions, stepped out of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary last week into bright sunshine and into a brighter world of freedom. At the foot of the steps, the pair turned back toward the prison and raised their arms in victory to friends peering out the barred windows. Ezequiel Puentes-Prieto claimed he had never despaired of being freed because "I've never done anything wrong." His companion Jorge Perez-Paez had not lost hope either but admitted, "I had gotten depressed about ever leaving."

The two were among the first of 381 Cuban refugees ordered freed by Federal District Judge Marvin Shoob of Atlanta. Of the more than 125,000 Cubans who flooded onto the shores of south Florida last year, some 1,800 still languish in the Atlanta prison. Two weeks ago, Judge Shoob ran out of patience. Calling the Cubans "people" and "not numbers," he ordered federal officials to release 381 who were imprisoned simply because they had entered the U.S. without the proper papers. Government lawyers did not object to freeing the 155 who had already been cleared by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but filed a motion to stay the release of the other 226. Shoob agreed to give the INS until Sept. 8 to review those cases. Declared the judge: "The logjam has been broken."

The fate of the jailed Cubans is one of the thorniest immigration dilemmas ever faced by Washington. Originally detained by the INS for admitting they had criminal records, most of those held in Atlanta have since been found "excludable" by administrative law judges. The Carter Administration had begun to develop a plan to review the cases of all 1,800 and free those judged not dangerous, but the Reagan White House froze the releases so the matter could be studied further.

As local legal-aid lawyers began to take on the cases of imprisoned Cubans one by one, it eventually became clear that many of the suspected "criminals" were nothing of the sort. Some had been jailed in Cuba only for misdemeanors or for acts not considered illegal in the U.S., and others were innocent of virtually any wrongdoing. Ignacio Ruiz de Armes, for example, told TIME Correspondent Anne Constable that he had been jailed in Cuba for refusing to serve in the armed forces as well as for stealing a boat to escape from the island. Says he: "There are many here who do not represent any kind of threat to this society."

Norman Carlson, director of the Bureau of Prisons, estimates that one-third of the 1,800 either had committed only minor crimes or had been mistakenly detained. The rest he divides evenly between "ordinary criminals" and those who are "almost indescribably dangerous." The challenge, of course, is determining which are which. Associate Attorney General Rudolph Guiliani says that the only way to sift through the cases is to listen to the tape recordings of the initial interviews between the refugees and INS officers made last year--a time-consuming process--and that Shoob is rushing the Government. Shoob claims he is only forcing the sluggish INS to free those for whom the Government cannot make a convincing argument for continued detention. For the innocents among the imprisoned Cubans and for their supporters, Judge Shoob's order is good news indeed. "The Government was doing nothing, while these people were sitting in a cage," complains Tomas Antona, a founder of the Atlanta Committee on Behalf of Cuban Prisoners. Adds Rafael Fernandez-Roque, a Cuban still awaiting his freedom: "That man has done what we never dreamed the INS could do. We are all grateful."

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