More Cubans being caught at sea while trying to reach U.S.

Publication: South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

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COPYRIGHT 2005 South Florida Sun-Sentinal

Byline: Madeline Baro Diaz and Ruth Morris

CAIBARIEN, Cuba _ Their names are spoken from dark patios, where mothers rock their babies to sleep, and along the seawall where teenagers arrive on rusted bicycles to trade news.

Their friends ask about them in passing on the streets, or with tight throats if there has been no word. Their photographs still hang on the walls.

Virtually every family in this fishing town 150 miles east of Havana knows someone who has boarded an overcrowded boat headed for the Florida Straits, a flow of human cargo that has waxed and waned over the years based on U.S. immigration policies, gumption and tide charts.

Now, say U.S. immigration officials, the number of Cubans caught at sea is rising, and more are making it to South Florida shores.

According to U.S. Coast...

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