U.S. Returns 13 Rafters to Cuban Soil : Immigration: The would-be emigres are the first to be repatriated under new policy. In Miami, anti-Castro exiles continue their protests.

In an unprecedented scene that weeks ago most Cuban American exiles here could not have imagined, 13 men who tried to sail to Florida were led down the gangplank of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and handed over to Cuban authorities in the port of Cabanas on Tuesday, six days after they were picked up at sea.

The rafters were the first to be repatriated to Cuba under the terms of a May 2 Clinton Administration policy switch that in effect ends more than three decades of special treatment of Cuban refugees.

As Coast Guard officials stood at attention on the deck of the cutter Durable, the 13 would-be immigrants, dressed in T-shirts, shorts and sandals, walked back onto Cuban soil shortly after noon.

As film of the Cubans arrival was broadcast over Miami television stations Tuesday afternoon, exiles incensed over the policy change erupted in anger. “This is a day of infamy for the United States,” said Francisco Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation. “They have failed in their duty to protect the defenseless and attack the aggressor.”

Continuing three days of protests, about 200 Cuban Americans blocked traffic along a major downtown street while waving Cuban flags and holding signs denouncing the policy.

In Washington, Cuban-born Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) was arrested for trespassing outside the White House after he failed to obey a police order to move. “We have to use every peaceful means possible to let the Clinton Administration know that commitments with (Cuban President Fidel) Castro and secret deals are as unacceptable as they are immoral,” he said.

The White House, however, said that the repatriation of Cuban refugees will continue. The new policy “was a tough decision, but we believe the right one, and we will continue to carry it out,” a White House spokeswoman said.

In Miami, Miriam Malpica, mother of two of the 13 rafters, made a last-minute appeal to President Clinton to call off the repatriation. “I shall never see them again,” she said in a letter. “They will be mistreated, persecuted and imprisoned. And I will lead a lifeless existence.”

But Cuban authorities and U.S. consular officials on hand for the repatriation said that the men should all be home in Camaguey Province by evening.

The rafters, all between the ages of 28 and 45, were plucked from the ocean by a Miami-based cruise ship as it passed south of Cuba last Wednesday, a day after Atty. Gen. Janet Reno announced that Cubans no longer would be granted automatic entry into the United States as refugees from communism.

Although some 21,000 rafters held since last summer in detention camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be allowed into the country, Reno said, any future rafters will be turned back.

“Cubans must know that the only way to come to the United States is by applying in Cuba,” asserted Reno.

The cutter Durable docked just after noon Tuesday in Cabanas, a port city about 40 miles west of Havana that is home to Cuba’s largest naval base. The Cubans were met on board the ship by U.S. officials who briefed the men on how to apply for visas at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

After being led off the cutter, the 13 were bused to a reception center near Jose Marti Airport in Havana to be interviewed by Cuban authorities, who had agreed to detain the men no longer than 24 hours while checking for past criminal activity, according to a U.S. State Department official.

While at sea the Cubans had been interviewed by U.S. immigration officers to see if any qualified for political asylum. None, apparently, met the criterion of having a “credible” fear of persecution in Cuba. Under the U.S.-Cuban agreement, the Castro government promised that returning rafters would not face reprisals.

In forging its new policy on illegal Cuban immigrants, the Administration clearly wanted to prevent a mass exodus from the island similar to that of last summer, when almost 40,000 balseros , or rafters, attempted to reach Florida by floating across the Florida Straits. After several thousand Cubans had reached shore and an untold number had perished at sea, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard began to intercept the rafters and shuttle them to makeshift camps at Guantanamo on Cuba’s southeast coast.

At one point last fall, more than 32,000 Cubans were being held there.

The new policy may reflect the thinking of some Clinton Administration advisers known to favor improving relations with the Cuban government and re-evaluating the effectiveness of the 34-year-old economic blockade.

Protests over the policy reversal began almost comically Sunday at the port of Miami, where about 200 exiles gathered to greet the Majesty of the Seas, the luxury cruise ship that found the 13 men adrift in two small boats near the Cayman Islands. The men were transferred to the Coast Guard cutter Northland on Friday and on Sunday were taken aboard the smaller, 210-foot Durable for the trip to Cabanas.

Citing as their models the nonviolent protests of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the demonstrators here briefly blocked traffic Sunday on the road into the port by lying down in the street. But at the urging of Miami police, many of whom are Cuban American, the protesters agreed to limit their sit-downs in the street to 10-minute intervals so that traffic would not be impeded for long.

On Monday, protests became more disruptive as demonstrators shut down a major east-west expressway for about 45 minutes by stopping their vehicles in toll booth lanes. That action led to several angry exchanges between protesters and motorists but no violence or arrests were reported.

Later Monday, several hundred demonstrators, waving Cuban flags and carrying signs denouncing the Clinton Administration, also marched down the center of a downtown Miami street, blocking rush-hour traffic. Those protests continued Tuesday morning.

Not all Cubans in Miami oppose the Administration’s policy. Andres Gomez, a leader of the leftist Antonio Maceo Brigade, welcomed the shift “as the type of step that has to be taken to normalize relations with Cuba.”

Allowing Cubans to enter the United States illegally while denying visas to all but a few, encouraged balseros and cost lives, Gomez said. He described those protesting the change as “right-wingers who have never been concerned about the welfare of the Cuban people.”

No other rafters have been spotted since the policy change was announced. But at least one Cuban crossed the minefield into the Guantanamo Naval Base and 22 other Cubans were being held in detention by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service after they arrived at Miami International Airport without visas.

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this story.