Cubans’ Detention Now a Stalemate : Refugees: The U.S. is prepared for an indefinite warehousing of would-be migrants who will likely resist the bitter option of returning to face Castro.

Safely rescued from the roiling Straits of Florida, Douglas Suarez, a 26-year-old leather artisan from Havana, posed two simple questions.

“How long will they keep us at the military base?” he asked as he and scores of other exhausted balseros (rafters) reposed on the salt-sprayed deck of a Coast Guard cutter earlier this week after their harrowing journeys from Cuba. And: “When can we go to the United States?”

Nobody seems to have answers.

The exodus of Cuban rafters appears to have ended after Cuban President Fidel Castro’s decision this week to resume enforcement of his ban on irregular exits. In return, Washington has agreed to boost legal immigration slots for Cubans who apply at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

But Suarez’s pointed questions--repeated by scores of other rescued rafters--continue to resonate in the White House amid a Cuban American community that says it has been betrayed and at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, abruptly transformed into a throbbing migrant way station.

The Pentagon seems to have withstood the initial logistics challenge and provided sufficient food, clothing and shelter for the migrants, though several disturbances have already broken out and many believe that additional unrest is inevitable. Brig. Gen. Michael J. Williams, who heads the task force overseeing the operation, called conditions “not good.”

The Cuban detainee population on Guantanamo is expected to peak today at more than 30,000. As many as 10,000 migrants are slated to be transferred to new camps at a U.S. military facility near the Panama Canal. A few hundred eventually may elect to resettle with family members in Mexico, Venezuela or other countries with substantial Cuban communities.

Most of Guantanamo’s other migrants, about 14,000 Haitians, are expected to return voluntarily to their homeland once that island’s military rulers are removed, by persuasion or invasion. But Castro, now facing off with the ninth U.S. President during his 35-year reign, does not appear to be going anywhere soon.

And few of his former subjects on Guantanamo relish the thought of returning to a bankrupt police state where an average month’s pay in pesos will not even buy a chicken but where tourists and others with access to dollars can enjoy relative luxury.

“I’m never going back,” declared Romel Rivera Despaigne, a 54-year-old grandfather from Santiago de Cuba, who was among those interviewed last week beneath an olive-drab tent at one dusty Guantanamo encampment. “I’ll go to another country if I have to, but not to Cuba again.”

In Florida, members of the politically powerful Cuban exile lobby--enraged by a detention policy that reversed three decades of favorable treatment for anyone fleeing Cuba--have demanded the release of detainees to relatives.

But the Clinton Administration, fearing any step that might spark a new exodus, seems determined not to retreat from its policy of indefinite detention. Only the severely ill or injured are being taken to the United States. (Children born at the camps are considered Cuban nationals.)

In fact, officials are preparing to play host to the balseros for the long term. The military is recruiting doctors, teachers and other skilled personnel among the camp population to augment services. A Cuban American civilian administrator may soon be appointed to serve as liaison between migrants and their overseers, officials said. The government is flying in nonprofit lawyers to observe conditions and speak with the migrants.

Meantime, U.S. and Cuban negotiators are working to craft a formal mechanism that would allow the repatriation of those willing to go back to Cuba. There seems to be little doubt that U.S. policy-makers would prefer that most migrants exercise this option, however unpalatable. Compared to the grim barracks existence on Guantanamo, officials reason, life back in Cuba may eventually not seem that bad. But no one will be forced back, authorities vowed.

Pointedly, Cubans can only take advantage of the new immigration slots by applying at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Migrants at Guantanamo are only being warehoused, not processed.

Allowing detainees to apply for visas, political asylum or other relief at Guantanamo, officials explained, might prompt others in Cuba to set out on rickety vessels or attempt to crash the base boundaries from Cuban territory bordering the facility.

It is unclear how many of those now held at Guantanamo could even qualify for U.S. entry once the new criteria are hammered out.

Those with close family in the United States and documented histories of political oppression are likely to receive preference in what is expected to be a fierce competition for the minimum of 20,000 Cuban entries guaranteed each year. But many rafters are young and have only distant U.S. kin and thus may not easily fit the profile. Guantanamo detainees are openly skeptical of ever receiving visas, many having been spurned before.

Denouncing the U.S.-Cuba accord, Cubans at Guantanamo who say they were sold out have staged large-scale protests.

Nonetheless, military officials expressed confidence that they can keep the camps operating on a long-term basis--despite the threat of violence, the cost (now estimated at $20 million a month just for basics) and the disruption of a critical fleet training and logistics site.