Cuban Inmates Take Over Part of Prison : Immigration: Detainees at a federal facility in Alabama hold 11 hostages in a tense standoff with armed officers.

A group of Cuban inmates fighting deportation to their homeland took over part of a federal prison Wednesday and were holding 11 hostages, authorities said.

One worker at the Talladega Federal Correctional Institution was injured slightly in the takeover, officials said.

Prison officials described the area seized by the inmates as a housing unit known as “Alpha Unit.”

“Emergency procedures have been implemented and negotiations continue with the Cuban detainees,” prison officials said in a written statement.

A tense standoff remained at early evening as armed officers in bullet-proof vests stood outside the sprawling medium-security facility.

Officials said the prisoners did not have keys that would allow them to escape from the unit.

Reports of the inmates’ demands ranged from media attention to their grievances to meetings with Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and officials of the United Nations commission on refugees.

Officials identified the hostages as eight members of the prison staff and three members of the Immigration and Naturalization Service staff assigned to the prison housing unit that was seized. They included eight men and three women.

Ed Crosley, the prison public information officer, said late Wednesday that as many as 25 inmates apparently overpowered the corrections employees even though the inmates had been wearing handcuffs.

“They were being moved back and forth from showers and recreation areas,” Crosley said. He theorized that they may have “slipped their restraints.” Crosley said the prisoners “have made threats . . . to harm the hostages,” adding that “they do have some home-made knives.”

Crosley said the hostages “to our knowledge” had not been not injured.

Negotiators from the Federal Bureau of Prisons were in contact with the inmates, apparently by telephone, and the mood was described as “fairly calm.”

Crosley said that two of the Cubans had emerged as leaders in the negotiations. The inmates had asked that gas not be used, he said, but had made no other specific demands except for freedom and food. By shortly after midnight, the food had not been delivered to the prisoners and negotiators were using it as a bargaining tool.

The takeover, which began at about 9 a.m., was the second major uprising among Cuban detainees since thousands of them were jailed after the Mariel boat lift in 1980 brought 125,000 Cubans to the United States.

In November, 1987, Cuban inmates took control of two federal facilities in Atlanta and Oakdale, La., setting fires and brandishing weapons in an effort to avoid deportation.

Those riots resulted from a State Department announcement that Cuba had agreed to take back 2,500 of the 3,800 Cubans being held nationwide.

The Atlanta uprising lasted 11 days, while the one at Oakdale ended after eight days. Government officials’ promises to review each case individually brought the sieges to an end, and the number of deportations were reduced substantially. Since 1985, there have been 658 deportations of inmates back to Cuba, according to government figures.

Officials here said 32 of the 121 inmates were scheduled to be deported today. But they initially declined to link the uprising to scheduled deportations.

Gary Leshaw, an Atlanta attorney who has represented detainees in class-action lawsuits, said he received a telephone message at his Atlanta office around lunchtime Wednesday and recognized the voice of a man who said he was part of the uprising.

“He wanted media attention and he wanted to speak to the U.N. refugee organization,” Leshaw said.

The detainees--nationally they number 2,500--are being held because they have been convicted of committing crimes in the United States. They have assailed the deportation process as unfair.

Those who have completed their criminal sentences remain in a state of limbo because the U.S. government refuses to release them.

The facility here is one of several around the country where Cuban detainees were sent after the rioting in Atlanta and Oakdale.

The total prison population here is more than 1,171, although the facility was designed to hold 510 prisoners. In addition to the Cubans in the seized housing unit, officials said, there are 18 Americans being held there.

Researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

The first boatload of 125,000 refugees from Mariel, Cuba, arrived in Florida in 1980, and many were detained because of criminal backgrounds or mental illness. Some not held on arrival have since been detained, awaiting deportation to Cuba, because of crimes committed in the United States. Detainees have rioted at least six times. After an 11-day riot in Atlanta and Oakdale, La., in 1987, a moratorium on deportations was offered, but deportations were resumed in December, 1988.