Through the years, Cuban exiles have held one certainty close to the heart: Touch U.S. soil and you're safe.
Soon, that may no longer be true.
If the Clinton administration successfully negotiates with the Havana government to return Cuban refugees who arrive here illegally, it will be doing away with a symbol nearly four decades old -- the freedom-seeker who risks his life at sea and arrives in South Florida to a hero's welcome.
On Friday, the White House backpedaled and ``clarified'' its way through the proposed switch in U.S. immigration practice by saying the change had not yet occurred, had not been agreed to by Havana, and would affect only some of the illegal Cuban migrants reaching the United States in the future.
The bottom line remained that the administration is trying to establish a mechanism to send home Cuban refugees considered ``excludable'' -- those who enter the country illegally with no valid claim to political asylum, no ties to the local community or with a criminal past.
An existing agreement with Cuba has allowed the United States to repatriate about 1,500 Cubans found excludable for serious criminal offenses since 1984. But there is no such agreement for people whose only crime may be washing ashore in Miami Beach.
Word of the proposed change -- revealed Thursday in Havana by veteran Cuban diplomat Ricardo Alarcon -- set off a storm of reaction in South Florida.
``This is the end of The Cuban Exile [community], as such, from an immigration perspective,'' said lawyer Rafael Peñalver, who fought the deportation of Cubans who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift. ``It's a major step toward the normalization of immigration relations . . . which has been the goal of both governments.''
Said Jose Basulto, president of Brothers to the Rescue: ``This is the moment when the Statue of Liberty lets go of her torch and covers her face in shame.''
Cuban exile leaders quickly prepared a campaign to persuade President Clinton to back off. At this point, the issue is still up for discussion. U.S. and Cuban negotiators agreed in the latest round of migration talks, which ended in Havana on Thursday, to discuss the issue in their next session. That is expected to take place in four or five months in New York.
``It's a question now of making policy, [determining] what will the policy be,'' a State Department official said Friday.
Flood of inquiries
Cuban Americans flooded the State Department and the White House with phone calls Friday, wondering if -- weeks after his re-election -- Clinton was moving swiftly to strip their compatriots of any remaining special status when they reach America's door.
Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, angrily called for the Cuban community to mobilize to protest the negotiations. He asked Cubans who supported Clinton and worked on his re-election campaign to ``plead with him now not to commit this infamy.''
The Cuban American National Foundation issued a statement saying it would ``work with our friends in Congress and appeal to President Clinton to reject this ill-conceived proposal.''
``The notion of the United States turning over innocent asylum seekers to the hands of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro's dictatorship is abhorrent and morally reprehensible,'' the statement said.
Late Friday afternoon, a group of exiles staged a protest in front of the Krome Avenue detention center in West Dade. Most of them have relatives among the 50 Cubans held at Krome and were fearful that the news meant the United States would continue to hold them until they could be deported to Cuba.
``The U.S. government has the right to control its borders, but we have to be sensitive to who's fleeing Cuba, because what exists there is still a dictatorship,'' said Leonardo Viota, an immigration lawyer and coordinator of the exile group Agenda Cubana, whose motto is ``No Castro No Problem.''
Lawyer Wilfredo Allen said more than 50 clients called him Friday after hearing the news.
`Panic and concern'
``There's massive panic and concern among people who were released from Krome but have not completed the one-year term to apply for residence status,'' Allen said.
The White House statement later in the day calmed some of those fears. It said the deportations would not be retroactive and would begin only when and if Cuba signs an agreement to accept the repatriations.
James Dobbins, the Latin America director of the National Security Council, said Friday that ``no non-criminals currently in the United States will be sent back to Cuba.''
This week's development follows a major change in May of last year, when the U.S. government for the first time began forcibly repatriating Cuban migrants intercepted at sea who were deemed unqualified for asylum.
The only guaranteed refuge left was for those Cubans who made it to U.S. shores.
``It was a feeling of one more saved, one more who escaped,'' Peñalver said. ``They had managed to jump the Berlin Wall, and if they landed in West Berlin, then the West would take them in, give them refuge.
``Now they are saying, `No we'll throw them back.' ''
Herald staff writer Cynthia Corzo contributed to this report.
Copyright © 1996 The Miami Herald