Coast Guard Picks Up Record 1,072 Haitians : Refugees: U.S. officials are concerned that the one-day total could signal a mass migration. If so, the tent city at Guantanamo Bay will soon hit capacity.

Hours after 1,072 Haitian refugees were picked up at sea--a record one-day total--a Pentagon official expressed concern Friday that a new mass migration from the Caribbean island may be under way that could soon swamp a temporary tent city at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“It’ll only take a few days and we’re overloaded,” the official said. “Five days like this and we’re in trouble.”

After the U.S. Coast Guard plucked the Haitains from 16 sailboats, many of them dangerously overloaded, they were transferred to Guantanamo, where more than 8,000 refugees are now being held under military guard.

Haitians began fleeing their impoverished homeland weeks after the Sept. 30 military coup that ousted elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The camp, opened in November after a federal judge in Miami blocked the forced repatriation of the refugees, was set up to hold about 12,500 people, the Pentagon official said. Once capacity is reached, he added, “It is no longer a humanitarian effort; it becomes a staging area” for moving the Haitians to other locations.

Advocates for the refugees contend that the Haitians should be allowed into the United States to make claims of political asylum. The Bush Administration insists that most of the boat people are economic migrants looking for a better life.

Since Oct. 29, however, 3,007 of some 10,500 interdicted have been found to have a plausible claim to political asylum. Of those, 1,086 have been flown to Miami and paroled into the community pending hearings.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials suggest that news of the paroles may have sparked this week’s record migration after weeks in which the refugee stream had virtually dried up.

Ira Kurzban, a Miami attorney representing the refugees, disputes that. “What’s really going on is repression in Haiti,” he said, “and obviously lots of people want to get out of there now.”

In Atlanta, meanwhile, the U.S. 11th District Court of Appeals continued to weigh a decision that could allow the Administration to begin repatriating the Haitians. The three judges heard oral arguments in the case Wednesday, when U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr asserted that the refugees had “no enforceable rights” to avoid being returned under an interdiction policy adopted by the Ronald Reagan Administration in 1981.

A ruling from the court is expected soon.

Times staff writers John Broder and Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this story.