Cubans in Miami Protest U.S. Policy on Returning Refugees

An 18-wheeler blocked six lanes leading to the Port of Miami on Sunday as Cuban Americans protested the new U.S. policy of sending Cuban rafters back home.

About 200 people climbed on the truck and jumped police barricades outside the port, where a cruise ship that had picked up 13 Cuban refugees last week docked before dawn. More than 100 officers tried to control the crowd.

The truck blocked all traffic leading in and out of the port for almost an hour before its driver was arrested and his rig moved. Police also arrested about a dozen protesters who were blocking the road and waving Cuban flags.

The 13 refugees were picked up in the Caribbean late Wednesday and handed over to U.S. authorities two days later. They were being ferried Sunday toward Cuba aboard a Coast Guard cutter.

The men, ages 28 to 45, would become the first rafters repatriated under the Clinton Administration policy that took effect Tuesday.

“As soon as they arrive in Cuba, they will be going to prison. They will not be free,” said protester Carmen Iglesias, who left Cuba in 1957.

For 35 years, Cuban refugees were granted permanent residency almost without question--a status given to no other immigrant group.

While up to 20,000 Cubans detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can enter the United States, new refugees will be sent back to Fidel Castro’s Communist regime.

Only those with strong political asylum claims will be allowed to enter the United States.

The Miami Herald on Sunday quoted an unidentified State Department official as predicting that the 13 refugees will be handed over to Cuban authorities today.

Meanwhile, top Republicans in Congress attacked the policy in TV interviews Sunday.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said it amounts to collaboration with Castro when the United States should be pressing for his downfall.