PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. – Twenty of the 24 Cuban migrants who made it to the American Shoal lighthouse near Sugarloaf Key last month are going to be taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for further evaluation and screening, according to a court document released Thursday.
The remaining four will be repatriated to Cuba, U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said in a court filing.
The decision comes after Judge Darrin P. Gayle ruled Tuesday that the migrants must return to Cuba because the lighthouse on which they landed was not considered dry land.
Also Thursday, the migrants' attorneys said a handwritten note from the migrants was found in a bottle by a fisherman.
The note claims that one of the women aboard the cutter is ill, and that they have all been given food that only animals would eat, attorneys said.
The letter states that the migrants have been sleeping on the floor each night and describes living on the cutter like being in hell.
Immigration officials repatriated the other four Cubans, because they did not have "fear of persecution," records show.
"The other four might not have said the key words even though they probably have the same fears," Cuban activist Ramon Saul Sanchez said Friday.
Movimiento Democracia, Spanish for Democracy Movement, is a group of Cuban exiles who has taken interest in the case. The group has attorneys representing the interest of the migrants to stay in the U.S. But a federal judge denied their motions to have access to the migrants.
"We're very happy that the 20 people will be given a chance to remain in freedom," Sanchez said.
There will be a hearing in the case in August.
