Finally, success for Cuban taxi-boat builder

On his third attempt, a mechanic who turned cars into boats to flee the Communist island gets to finish the trip.

MIAMI - Four of the 14 Cubans intercepted at sea aboard a vintage taxi converted to a boat will be allowed to stay in the United States because they have valid immigration documents, but the 10 others will be repatriated to Cuba, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Rafael Diaz Rey, the mechanic who built the blue, 1948 Mercury taxi-boat, his wife and their two children appear to have legitimate U.S. parole documents that would permit them to stay in this country, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami said.

An attorney for Democracy Movement, a Cuban exile group in Miami, said Diaz and his family won the documents last year in an annual lottery in Cuba for legal travel to the United States. But the communist government of President Fidel Castro refused to let them leave.

"It was the Cuban government's refusal to let them go that drove them to commit this act," attorney Wilfredo Allen said. "They had to act before the documents expired."

After interviewing the remaining 10 migrants aboard the Coast Guard cutter Decisive, Homeland Security Department officials concluded they have no reasonable fear of being persecuted or tortured if they are repatriated to Cuba, according to documents filed in federal court.

Lawyers representing the Cubans, who were intercepted while adrift Tuesday about 14 miles south of Key West, have asked U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore to allow the entire group to stay in the United States.

Under the U.S. "wet foot-dry foot" policy, Cubans intercepted at sea are generally returned to Cuba, and those who make it to U.S. soil are usually allowed to stay. The taxi-boat did not reach U.S. shores.

According to records filed in federal court, Diaz and his family were denied U.S. entry visas in 2003. But they did have valid parole documents - part of a 1995 U.S.-Cuba agreement allowing some Cubans to legally emigrate each year - which would permit them to remain in the United States and eventually become permanent legal residents.

Family members in Cuba said Diaz was making his third attempt to reach the United States aboard a car converted into a boat.

In 2004, they said, Diaz was intercepted on a Buick sedan powering a barge, and a decade earlier he had to turn back because of electrical problems in a 1947 Buick car-boat. Other migrants have attempted the crossing aboard vessels made out of a 1951 Chevrolet truck and a 1959 Buick.

Details about how the latest car-boat operated were not known. It was outfitted with a prow on the front that allowed it to cut through waves. Previous car-boats from Cuba have been powered by a propeller attached to the drive shaft.

[Last modified June 10, 2005, 01:10:11]