• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 12 / 12 / 2010

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BY CAROL ROSENBERG. [email protected]. Seventeen Cuban migrants who were discovered at sea in homemade boats over the previous seven days were returned to Cuba Saturday, among them up to a half-dozen who were saved from a sinking raft and got to spend a night aboard the luxury cruise ship Monarch of the Seas.

An 18th would-be migrant was being sent to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to decide whether he or she is entitled to asylum.

Someone aboard the 880-foot Royal Caribbean cruise ship spotted six Cubans' ``rustic vessel'' 18 miles west of Freeport, Bahamas, on Sunday, according to a Coast Guard statement.

The ship radioed the Coast Guard and took them aboard ``safely,'' it said.In the course of the week they were moved first on Monday to a 45-foot response boat, the 87-foot patrol boat Cutter Shrike, and then to the 110-footer Ocracoke out of St. Petersburg.

There were five men and a woman aboard the raft, and it was sinking, according to a statement issued by Royal Caribbean. The cruise ship had departed CocoCay, the cruise lines private island in the Bahamas, and was heading back to Port Canaveral.

``We gave them medical treatment. They were dehydrated,'' said Royal Caribbean's Cynthia Martinez, adding they were turned over to the Coast Guard before the ship reached Port Canaveral.

``They were on the ship for less than 24 hours,'' she said, adding, ``they weren't mingling with the guests.''

The other Cubans repatriated Saturday at Bahia de Cabañas, Cuba, were up to a dozen who had been spotted by the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Tahoma on Dec. 4 some 12 miles north of Punta Maisi, Cuba.

That group was taken aboard the 110-cutter Sitkinak, based in Miami, then moved to another cutter and finally to the Ocracoke for repatriation.

A Coast Guard petty officer who was responsible for taking media questions on Saturday said she didn't know whether the Guantánamo-bound migrant had been aboard the luxury liner cruise ship or the other one.

The cutter Shrike is an 87-foot patrol boat based in Port Canaveral, Fla.

Under the United States' wet foot/dry foot immigration policy, Cubans intercepted at sea are generally sent back to the island while those who make it to U.S. soil are allowed to stay.

Source: //www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/11/1968980/