Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

U.S. will accept Cubans who set foot on old span

The question now is whether the Castro government will allow them to leave again.

MIAMI - A federal judge has approved an agreement letting 14 Cuban migrants come to the United States, a destination they thought they had reached in January when their boat landed at an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys.

All the Cubans have been sent back to the island and it is unclear whether Cuba's government will let them leave. But they will be given immigration papers under the agreement approved last week by U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno.

The agreement also vacates Moreno's Feb. 28 order against the U.S. government, removing a potential legal precedent for lawyers to use in future Cuban immigration controversies. That ruling found that the Cubans, by reaching the old bridge, had reached the U.S. shore, and that they were illegally forced to return to Cuba.

In return, the U.S. government will drop its planned appeal of Moreno's decision.

"The public interest is served by a prompt resolution of this legal dispute," Moreno wrote.

The group of Cubans includes two children, ages 2 and 13. Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of a Cuban-American advocacy group, said the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro has not said it will prevent the group from leaving the island.

Under the U.S. "wet foot-dry foot" policy, most Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to remain, while those intercepted at sea are generally sent back. Federal lawyers had argued that the old Keys bridge did not count as dry land because sections are missing and it no longer connects to U.S. soil.

[Last modified March 21, 2006, 02:30:40]