The Nation - News from Feb. 1, 1988

The government is releasing five times as many Cubans from prison each month as it did before riots in two federal lockups last year focused attention on the detainees’ efforts to remain in this country, a published report said. Since Dec. 4, when Cuban prisoners and U.S. negotiators signed an agreement ending an 11-day siege at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, the number of Cubans freed has gone from about 20 a month to about 100 a month, said a report in combined editions of the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. During the same period, another 1,200 were approved for release by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but most had been already cleared for release before about 2,500 detainees rioted in Atlanta and Oakdale, La., the papers said.