U.S. to Keep Cuban Refugees in Custody

The federal government issued guidelines Friday that will keep imprisoned Cuban boatlift refugees in custody until they can be deported, even if the states in which they are incarcerated release them.

Federal officials had announced last week that some of the less dangerous “Marielitos” might be released to ease prison crowding but quickly backed down after vigorous protests from Florida Gov. Bob Graham and Sen. Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.).

“The federal government is not going to let people out that are going to cause harm,” Perry Rivkind, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service here, told a news conference Friday.

Rivkind cited several cases in which Cubans were released from state prisons and into federal custody after serving only part of their sentences, including 59 Mariel criminals held in Florida who served only one-third of sentences that averaged eight years.

The state has 700 prisoners who came to the United States in the boatlift from the Cuban port of Mariel in 1980.

Under the new guidelines, the INS said it will review on a case-by-case basis all Mariel prisoners scheduled for release by the states and accept those who have served out their terms.

In addition, the agency said it will ask states to revoke parole for Mariel prisoners and make them serve their full sentences. Even if states free the prisoners early, the federal government will keep them in custody, Rivkind said.

The American Civil Liberties Union questioned the constitutionality of holding Cubans who had been released from state custody.

“They’re playing politics with people’s lives,” said Wade Henderson, an immigration specialist and an associate director of the ACLU’s national office in Washington. “We are not certain whether they’ve been given due process.”

Rivkind said he hoped for a resumption in negotiations with Cuban President Fidel Castro over the estimated 1,000 Mariel prisoners behind bars nationwide.

Castro had at one point agreed to take back as many as 2,700 criminals who were among the nearly 125,000 Cubans who came to the United States from Mariel five years ago. Castro stopped accepting prisoners in May, however, when the U.S. government launched Radio Marti, a Spanish-language broadcast aimed at Cuba.