Imprisoned in limbo

...But the problem of convicted criminals and parole breakers has persisted for seven years without solution...

...To illustrate the problem, Bourgeois, in his letter, told the story of Francisco...

...In Atlanta's detention center, 274 have been released since 1985...

...Certainly, one cannot automatically take every inmate's story at face value...

...The priest's letter I (which was published without comment in the National Catholic Reporter and Christianity & Crisis) drew attention to some 1,000 Cuban inmates who remain imprisoned in the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana, even though they have already completed their criminal sentences...

...The joint appeal to the UN for an investigation, which I mentioned above, is a second way to break the perpetual , detention deadlock, though it has the distorting effect of making the U.S...

...Unfortunately, Castro's label "Cuban scum" stuck to the Mariel refugees — including 13,000 to 18,000 children and teens — even though studies show that it is largely a misnomer...

...If release is denied, another hearing is scheduled within a year...

...553...

...A "crime" in Cuba includes such noncriminal offenses in the U.S...

...The Supreme Court refused to near a 1986 case on, the matter...

...Given the circumstances surrounding the Mariel refugees — the traumatic and hasty exit of families, and the unscrupulous infusion of nearly 2,000 Cuban criminals Into their ranks — it hardly seems unusual that the U.S...

...How does the story of Francisco fit into such a picture...

...government — rather than the Cuban government which is ultimately at fault — the object of international investigation...

...More problematic is the 19 percent classified ambiguously as "non-felonious criminals, and political prisoners...

...Sixty-nine-year-old Francisco, Bourgeois said, landed in prison when a cab driver hauled him into the local precinct for being unable to pay a $7 cab fare...

...KAREN SUE SMITH Karen Sue Smith is an associate editor of Commonweal and director of the lona Center for Pastoral liturgy at lona College...

...Many of the handicapped and emotionally disturbed, it turned out, were children who flooded into Miami's Dade County Public School system...

...Castro's act has not been forgotten...

...Each case won in a lower court, however...

...training of the contras, recently wrote to a number of publications...

...to respond fo those Cubans whose human rights have been denied them- At the same time, there is no reason not to exert international pressure on Cuba to receive these citizens back...

...Few doubt that at least some of those Cubans now in detention are, in fact," violent criminals who have been, and may still be a danger to die community...

...in 1980 as part of the Mariel Boat Flotilla...

...Jervis acknowledged that law suits have been filed against INS for indefinitely detaining these convicts...

...Deportation is what had been planned for them until the broadcasts of Radio Marti angered Castro into reneging on his agreement to receive them...

...Then, as if in revenge, Castro emptied into the group several prisons and institutions for the handicapped and emotionally disturbed — "criminals and mental patients" — and denounced the entire flotilla as "Cuban scum...

...The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) classified only 1.4 percent of the refugees as felons (murderers, rapists, or thieves...

...However, advocates concerned about justice argue that those in custody deserve legal counsel at the hearings...

...was reversed on appeal...

...appearing on William Buckley's "Firing Line" with six other Democratic presidential aspirants, said of Castro's action: "Where Cuba is concerned, it will take a long time for me to forget that Castro opened the prisons and sent mentally ill criminals into the U.S., loosed upon an unsuspecting population...

...In addition, some 3,659 Mariel Cubans who are not now in INS custody but who are being held by state and local authorities for other crimes, will, upon completing their sentences, be detained by INS and enter the periodic review program...

...On the other hand, 'Lucas Guttentag of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — one of the organizations that has fought against the INS and on behalf of the Cuban refugees — said the story of Francisco didn't sound far-fetched at all, considering other incidents of incarceration for minor infractions he knew about...

...tences have been served...

...Still, because our legal process seems to have provided no recourse, the UN appeal may pressure the U.S...

...In truth, what distinguished the Mariel refugees from other Cuban refugee groups who arrived in the U.S...

...Jervis said, "It is to our advantage to release people when we can...

...After all, exporting violent criminals is not a practice that should go unprotested either, though a convincing case can be made that it would be unjust to deport them at this point Yet another solution has been proposed by various religious groups championing the cause of the detained Cubans, that is to release detainees to sponsors, as is customary in halfway houses for paroled prisoners, as a way of easing the transition and assigning some responsibility for refugees...

...broke off relations with Cuba at that juncture...

...government would, remain vigilant about assimilating the former and apprehending and detaining the latter, for the protection of its own Citizens...

...To alleviate the situation, the INS recently initiated a "status review plan'' under which every Cuban in INS custody from Mariel (3,564 persons in all) is slated for a hearing to determine whether or not release should be granted...

...Last May, the ACLU and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USAfiled an appeal to the UN whfch says: "the arbitrary and prolonged detention and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of the individuals described in this communication amount to a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights...

...It's expensive to detain them...

...White the vast majority of Mariel Cubans seem tohave been assimilated into the mainstream of American society by now, and most are eligible to regularize their stilus and begin the 552 particularly in light of the despair and violence, both homicides and suicides, growing among Cubans inside the two prisons...

...The U,S...

...Another 1,500 Cubans are held in the maximum security Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, and 300 have been held continuously for six years...

...And deportation itself doesn't seem too drastic a response to violent criminals, were the crimes fairly tried and the deportation carried out speedily...

...Not to be embarrassed by the growing international clamor for their right' to emigrate, Fidel Castro decided to look the other way for several months, allowing some 125,000 Cubans to leave the port city of Mariel to join their relatives in the U.S...

...and warrant an independent investigation or a' thorough study by the competent United Nations authorities...

...At Oakdale, where Cubans have been detained since November, 1980, 163 persons have been released so far...

...The Mariel Flotilla began seven years ago after more than ; 10,000 Cubans crammed themselves into the Peruvian embassy and grounds in Havana seeking asylum...

...This July, Senator Albert Gore (D-Tenn...

...And therein hangs the tale...

...But even violent criminals have rights in this society — whether they are citizens or not —to fair trials with legal counsel, and to release when their sen...

...He said that the Cubans' who had been detained had been convicted of acts of violence in the United States, and thereby had broken their entering status, known as parole, and are now excludable for citizenship and eligible for return to Cuba...

...as buying food on the black (read nongovernmental) market...

...At the station, Francisco's name came up on the police computer as one of die Cuban refugees who entered the U.S...

...during the previous two decades were: a larger number of mulattoes and blacks and a much younger average age...

...And for those whose violence is not even a question, i.e., if there is a Francisco who has been incarcerated for two years or more, without a hearing or a trial, for cheating a cabbie out of, less than ten dollars . . , that possibility demands that' 'due process*' be enlarged to fit even the hapless political pawns who find themselves among us...

...And one would have thought we'd have welcomed political prisoners from Cuba...

...Jervis, the INS public relations man I spoke with over the telephone, said that die story of Francisco was highly unlikely...