U.S. Tries to Discourage Cuban Rafters : Exodus: Warnings of the detention policy and pleas to stay at home are repeated. But thousands continue to ride the waves toward Florida.

The Clinton Administration, having failed so far to slow the exodus from Cuba, on Monday anxiously sought new ways to discourage the Cubans’ flight and find new places to house the thousands who have taken to sea.

As the daily tally of Cuban immigrants mounted, despite the new U.S. policy of rounding them up and detaining them, officials in Washington publicly expressed hope that the Cubans will heed U.S. pleas to stay home.

Privately, however, officials conceded that the warnings are being ignored and that the numbers of fleeing Cubans will soon overwhelm the facilities being cobbled together to contain them.

Administration officials, meeting frantically during the day on the refugee crisis, decided to increase the frequency of broadcasts to Cuba detailing the new U.S. policy and describing the fate awaiting those who lash together boards and inner tubes and set sail for Florida.

Despite four days of efforts to communicate the change in U.S. policy and stanch the outflow, 2,338 Cubans were picked up by Coast Guard and Navy vessels on Monday. The total for Sunday was 1,293.

“We’re not going to stand for another Mariel boat lift,” White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said Monday morning, as evidence steadily grew that just such a mass migration is well under way. The Mariel exodus of 1980 saw 125,000 Cubans, some of them criminals and mental patients, arrive in the United States over five months.

“The effort right now is to show very strongly that we’re going to detain these people,” Panetta added. “We are not going to simply take the same business-as-usual approach here.”

Doris Meissner, the nation’s top immigration officer, explicitly warned that Cubans who set sail for Florida will be sent to detention centers with no hope of admission to the United States.

Many Cubans picked up at sea and taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, apparently believe that the detention will be only temporary and that eventually they will be allowed to live in the United States.

But Meissner, asked whether any Cubans rescued at sea have any possibility of legally reaching the United States, answered flatly: “No, they do not.”

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told reporters at the Justice Department: “We’re trying to make the point that it’s terrifically unsafe for Cubans to take to the Florida Straits when there is a legitimate way to immigrate here.”

The United States permits the legal immigration of about 28,000 Cubans a year, but they must apply at the U.S. interest section in Havana to receive an immigrant visa. Many Cubans avoid the process because it is time-consuming and subjects them to possible harassment by the government of dictator Fidel Castro.

Claiming that an undetermined number of would-be immigrants have lost their lives at sea, Reno said: “There have been a number of incidents of rafts floating empty in the water.”

Officials on Monday also stepped up efforts to find additional havens in the Caribbean to house the Cubans. A makeshift refugee camp at Guantanamo Bay will accommodate up to 10,000, but that figure is expected to be reached within a week.

Two nations--Suriname and the Turks and Caicos Islands--have tentatively agreed to accept 2,500 Cubans each, but final agreements have not been reached, and the facilities are not yet in place. Panama is expected to allow the United States to house several thousand Cubans on U.S. military bases there, but agreement must await the new government’s taking office on Sept. 1.

If the exodus continues at anything like its current pace, however, all the camps will reach capacity in a few weeks.

Military officials announced that ships are being diverted from stations in the Atlantic and Caribbean to form a cordon around Cuba, although officials ruled out the imposition of a formal military blockade.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry said Monday that the U.S. military is doing its best to save those Cubans found drifting in the Florida Straits and would send additional ships to assist in the effort.

But Perry pointedly warned Cubans that U.S. capabilities are stretched thin and those who take to the sea are engaging in “a very dangerous operation,” with their best hope being indefinite detention and the worst alternative death.

At a brief press conference in Key West, Fla., where Perry flew to consult with Navy and Coast Guard officials involved in Cuban rescue efforts, the defense secretary said that 25 ships--19 Coast Guard cutters and six Navy ships--already are plucking Cubans from the sea. The Coast Guard also has deployed 35 smaller boats and 30 aircraft in the Cuban rescue mission.

Perry said that three more Navy ships and several more Coast Guard vessels will arrive in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Though the U.S. government’s attempts to keep Cubans on their own shores appear to be failing, warnings to U.S. residents not to try to smuggle Cubans into the country seem to be more effective.

Since Friday, three suspected groups of smugglers have been intercepted by the Coast Guard. The latest was intercepted late Sunday night in a small motorboat. Two suspected smugglers and two Cubans were aboard, according to Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Jerry Snyder.

He said it is unlikely that smugglers are evading the authorities.

“With that many Coast Guard ships out there, I’d be surprised if they were sneaking by us,” Snyder said.

An Administration official admitted that U.S. efforts to communicate the new policy and to discourage Cuban flight have fallen short. Even if Cubans are hearing the message that the U.S. door has been slammed shut, they’re ignoring it, the official said.

“I think the message that they’re not going to the United States is getting through, but people still think they’re going to make it eventually. People seem to have decided that even if they have to sit in some sort of safe haven or detention center, it’ll still be a quicker way to get to the United States than if they apply legally.

“We have to do a better job of getting that word out,” the official said. He also suggested that Castro is not only encouraging dissident elements to leave but also is jamming U.S. broadcasts describing the new anti-immigration policy.

Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren in Key West, Fla., and Robert L. Jackson and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this story.