Haitians Wait as U.S. Searches for a Solution

As the Bush Administration struggles to develop a policy to cope with the thousands of people fleeing Haiti, the government’s refugee camp here on the southeast Cuban coast is taking on an air of permanence.

On Friday, Camp McCalla was filled to capacity with 12,500 Haitians who once were headed for the United States in wooden sailboats. Intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard, they await their fate now in an elongated tent city that stretches for almost two miles along an unused air strip running between the sea and the Sierra Maestra mountains.

In gravel fields next to the tents, men and boys play soccer with deflated basketballs. Women hang laundry on the concertina wire barriers. Some people just lie on their cots, waiting for meal time.

Everywhere, the migrants line up. People stand in line for food, to be interviewed by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, to get blood tests. Some 190 Haitians have tested positive for the AIDS virus and are kept in a separate encampment.

Life in the tent city takes on a sun-stricken rhythm of its own. Two people have died here, both of natural causes. Thirty-seven babies have been born--including, on March 21, a girl named Milove to Mimose Destra, 20.

And although there is room for more refugees on the 31-square-mile base, the military’s ability to provide fresh water through an aging desalination plant and to shelter them if a hurricane strikes is stretched to the breaking point. Hurricane season begins June 1.

With these conditions as a backdrop, officials continued searching on Friday for ways to defuse the growing refugee crisis. There was no sense that a solution was at hand.

U.S. diplomats focused their efforts to open a second refugee camp in the Caribbean. They lobbied the Dominican Republic, which is located on the same island as Haiti. Bush Administration sources said they hope that the Dominican Republic can be persuaded to open a camp capable of sheltering 10,000 fleeing Haitians.

But other officials in Washington think that it is unlikely the Dominican Republic, which has strictly enforced emigration restrictions from Haiti in the past, will agree to the American request. An American site-survey team stood by for orders to fly there in the event that Haiti’s neighbor agreed to the proposal.

In the Caribbean, Coast Guard cutters on Friday spent their first day operating under new guidelines intended to discourage Haitians from continuing to flee by boat. The Coast Guard now will rescue only those Haitians in danger on the high seas, leaving those in seaworthy boats to fend for themselves, officials said.

Some Administration officials have proposed that the Coast Guard tighten its operating guidelines further, performing “rescues at sea” that would pick up Haitians and return them promptly to their homeland. But that proposal, which would deny fleeing Haitians the right to make their case for political asylum in the United States, has been “mired in political and legal red tape,” one knowledgeable official said.

In the meantime, Administration officials said they hope to clear more space at Guantanamo Bay by accelerating the rate at which Haitians either are repatriated or sent on to the United States to pursue their asylum claims. The Haitian government has said it could accept 2,000 returning Haitians per week, 500 more than are currently being returned weekly.

But some frustrated officials said Friday that none of the policies currently under consideration will solve the spiraling refugee problem.

“All these proposals do is make the problem bigger,” said one Administration official. “What we need is to find a policy that gets to the root of the problem. We’re still putting Band-Aids on.”

With a goal of keeping the camp’s population at no more than 12,500, the military this week adopted a one-in, one-out policy to cope with what seems like an unending influx of refugees.

“As more migrants arrive we repatriate them, or send them to Miami” if their asylum claims seem credible, said Brig. Gen. Kenneth W. Simpson. “It’s intensive management.”

Here in Guantanamo on Friday, 803 Haitians picked up at sea in the Windward Passage remained aboard six Coast Guard cutters, waiting for a cot in the tent city. Some were still at sea, while 350 others huddled under a yellow tarpaulin on the decks of the cutter Thetis docked here. Children hung over the rail, staring into the water; one played with a coin on the gray deck. Adults lay on blankets, holding their heads.

“We’re just waiting,” said Osnack Moro, 26, speaking in a mixture of Spanish and Creole. “We don’t know what will happen.”

The most recent exodus from Haiti began last October, weeks after the military coup that toppled the country’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Beset by poverty and political turmoil, more than 33,600 Haitians have fled their country, only to be interdicted at sea.

In March, five months after the camp opened, the population fell to about 2,500. But more than 10,000 have been picked up this month alone, and the flow does not appear to be abating. So far the U.S. government has spent more than $30 million to house and feed the refugees.

On Thursday, a sailboat overloaded with 371 men, women and children sailed right into Guantanamo Bay. “It had a foot of standing water in it,” said Simpson, who added that authorities were now beginning to see the same refugees returning two and three times.

Visits by reporters to the camp set off flurries of excitement Friday. Some of the refugees waved their yellow immigration ID cards and called out, “Come here. Listen to my story. They are sending me back for no reason.”

“My husband was sent to Miami two months ago, but they say my papers are not ready,” said Felix Louinose, 18. She explained through an interpreter that she and her family set sail from Port-au-Prince four months ago because their lives were threatened.

“Life is not that great here, but at least I don’t have to run,” she said. “No one is going to hurt me.”

Camp McCalla has been divided into sections, and each section has a “mayor.” The people police the grounds, slosh the black top floors with strong disinfectant, play dominoes.

INS Deputy Commissioner Ricardo Inzunza said all Haitians picked up are given interviews at sea. “We want to be fair and compassionate,” he said. “If we believe their story, they’re off to Miami. More than 6,000 Haitians have been cleared by officials here to go to the United States to pursue asylum claims.

On Friday, some who had received word that they won’t be going to the United States stood in line to board a military transport back to Port-au-Prince. “Yes, I will return,” vowed Josapha Pierre, 28, carrying a plastic bag of his belongings. “I was persecuted before, so I have no choice.”

Clary, a special correspondent, reported from Guantanamo. Healy, a Times staff writer, reported from Washington.