Joy, Sadness for Last Refugees to Reach U.S.

He had thought about it for years, but in the end success came down to a matter of scant hours.

Benjamin Brenan, who crossed the Florida Straits on a makeshift raft with his wife, two sons and his brother-in-law, smiled broadly Friday as he realized that he was one of the last people to get to American shores before the open-door policy for Cuban refugees slammed shut.

“I feel like a brand new person,” the 38-year-old auto mechanic said after taking his first shower in America and donning clean clothes. “I’m very happy that my sons will have what I didn’t have my whole life--freedom.”

As Brenan and his family ate black beans and rice and began to make plans for life in America, hundreds of other families that weathered the same shark-infested waters faced a fate much less certain.

On Thursday, hundreds of families like the Brenans passed through the Transit Center for Cuban Refugees on this tiny Florida Key, just a stone’s throw from Key West. For two years, the center, operated by a Cuban American businessman, has fed and clothed refugees who escaped from Cuba and made the perilous voyage to America, and then help match them up with relatives, friends or social services in Miami.

But only two families made it to the center Friday. Those picked up by Coast Guard cutters after the Clinton Administration’s new Cuban refugee policy was announced late Thursday by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno were taken to an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center.

Refugees picked up later, after President Clinton announced additional refinements in the Administration’s plan Friday afternoon, were being taken to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“These are the last human refugees we expect to see here” at the Coast Guard facility, said Petty Officer Gene Maestas. “The rest are being taken to Guantanamo Bay, like the President said.”

Mayelin Ortega, who had spent the night at the refugee center hoping to be reunited with her husband’s brothers, burst into tears when she learned of the President’s new policy. She worried that her brothers-in-law and all the other Cubans who left their homeland believing that America’s arms were wide open would arrive too late.

“Cubans are risking their own lives and the lives of their children to escape Fidel,” she said. “There’s plenty of room in the United States. How can the government send them back to Cuba?”

Her husband’s brothers, who were too young to travel to the United States during the Mariel boat lift 14 years earlier, left Cuba on Monday night, even earlier than the Brenans did. But by the flukes of the sea and rescue missions, the Brenans made it just before the policy change.

While rejoicing in his family’s fortune, Brenan expressed dismay over what the new policy would mean to his countrymen.

“I would like to suggest to Clinton to take into consideration the suffering the Cuban people are going through,” he said.

The other family at the refugee center expressed a similar sentiment.

“We’re very happy that the United States has opened its arms to us,” said Jose Ramon Ortega, 51. “We only wish Clinton would send the other refugees to any free country instead of sending them back to Cuba,” where they will be detained on the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.

Ortega--no relation to Mayelin Ortega--his wife, four grown children and son-in-law talked vividly about their long struggle to get from Cuba to the United States.

Seven months ago, they sat down together in their family home in Mariel and decided they wanted to leave. Three separate times they had built rafts, only to have to let them go into the sea when they were caught by authorities while trying to escape.

Each time, Ortega’s sons said, they had to steal inner tubes and save their money to buy the plywood and ropes necessary to construct the rough-hewed craft.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, the family successfully cast off from Cuban shores on three rafts that were attached.

The voyage was treacherous, they explained. Just hours after they set out, their food went overboard and they lost their bearings, so for 48 hours they bobbed in the waves and watched sharks swim past.

When after two days an airplane circled over head, they feared that it was Cuban, sent to sink their raft. Everyone cried and some screamed hysterically. Only later did they realize that the plane was there to assist in their rescue.

When asked if they feel like they are finally free--several of them shouted in unison: “Yes!”

“All I want to do is to breathe this free air and express openly all the things I have not been able to express for so many years,” said Barbara Santana, 52, Ortega’s wife.

She recounted the troubles her family had faced in Cuba because they were known as a family that wanted to leave. Most of their belongings were stolen. Ortega was fired from his job as a truck driver for failing to cooperate with the authorities.

“The repression got worse and worse,” she said. “It got to the point where you could not walk out of your house to sit under a tree without being hassled by people from the government about where you were going. There is no freedom.”

Her only regret, she said, is that she had to leave her oldest son behind because his children are so young.

“He did not want to put the children in danger of losing their lives in the high sea,” she said, crying.

But after regaining her composure, she added: “I have a daughter here who I have not seen since 1988, and a grandchild I have never met. This is our new life.”

Cuban Refugee Arrivals

1990: 4,291

Note: 1959 - Fidel Castro seizes power in revolution; 1980 - Mariel boat lift.

Source: INS Statistics. Compiled by D’JAMILA SALEM / Los Angeles Times