Ten migrants who left Cuba on Thanksgiving Day are believed to have perished in the ocean. The Coast Guard rescues one man

BY TERE FIGUERAS

A group of 11 Cuban migrants set off from the island on Thanksgiving Day on a homemade aluminum vessel patched together with tar -- but only one of the men survived, according to U.S. Cost Guard officials.

The deaths are just the latest of hundreds this year. Although definite numbers are impossible to come by, at least 200 migrants -- including Cubans, Haitians and Dominicans -- have died this year at sea, according to the Coast Guard.

The lone survivor from this expedition, a 24-year-old man spotted clinging to a pair of inner tubes, was repatriated and arrived Friday in the Cuban port of Cabanas, said Lt. Tony Russell, a Coast Guard spokesman.

The Coast Guard cutter Manitou pulled the man from the water nine miles east of Miami around noon Monday.

''He had been in the water drifting for at least two days,'' said Russell, who said the man was hypothermic -- with a body temperature of 90 degrees -- because of the prolonged exposure to unusually cool water. ``It was very traumatic for him, being out there so long without food or water.''

The man, whose name was not released, initially told officers he watched 10 of his fellow migrants drown after the 14-foot vessel broke apart in rough waters.

The Coast Guard searched the waters nonetheless. By Tuesday morning, his condition improved by intravenous liquids, the man was able to provide clearer details of the ill-fated voyage.

The group slipped away from the Cuban city of Matanzas the night of Nov. 27.

By the next morning, the makeshift boat engine failed, and the raft began to crack. The migrants, all of them adult men, managed to stay together until the vessel completely broke apart sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

''After holding on to debris -- inner tubes and things like that -- for a period, that's when the drownings are reported to have occurred,'' Russell said.

FLOATING AWAY

But the survivor revealed that one of his fellow migrants might have lived: ''He said he saw one person float away on an inner tube,'' Russell said.

Using a computer model, Coast Guard officials tried to predict the most likely course of drifting inner tube and alerted Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement aircraft and vessels to be on the lookout. The agency also sent out two rescue flights Tuesday morning. But the two days of searches, which spanned the coastal areas from Fort Lauderdale to Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas, turned up no survivors.

Then, on Wednesday, a civilian aboard a private boat noticed a body floating 19 miles off Fort Pierce Inlet.

The dead man was identified as one of the missing Cubans after the survivor was able to recall ''some identifying physical characteristics,'' said Russell, who declined to elaborate on the survivor's relationship with the other migrants. The body is now at the coroner's office in St. Lucie County, he said.

The discovery touched off yet another Coast Guard search in the unlikely event there were any survivors.

''At this point, someone would have been in the water for days. Even with two days, there is a very low chance of survival,'' Russell said.

By late Friday, no one had contacted the Coast Guard to report missing relatives.

Sixteen other recently interdicted Cubans were also repatriated and arrived Friday at Bahia de Cabanas. They included seven men picked up Nov. 28 by the cruise ship Enchantment of the Seas and three men picked up Nov. 26 by a civilian vessel 42 miles south of Key West. A fourth man in the group spotted near Key West was turned over to immigration officials in Guantánamo Bay for additional processing of asylum claims, the Coast Guard said.

Also on Nov. 26, immigration agents and Coast Guard officers intercepted a boat carrying five migrants -- including one woman -- and two suspected smugglers later turned over to immigration officials for possible charges.

Under the so-called wet foot/dry foot U.S. immigration policy, Cubans who arrive on American soil are allowed to stay, while those interdicted at sea are generally sent back to the island.

There have been 1,374 Cubans interdicted this year.

`CRUEL SCORE'

The Cuban American National Foundation released a statement Friday describing the 17 repatriations and 10 deaths as a ''cruel score,'' emblematic of a policy the foundation says ``does not work to solve the four-decades-old problem of the Fidel Castro regime.''

The Coast Guard also offered a message Friday, this one to would-be migrants and their American families.

''We strongly urge people not to take ventures like this, or funding or encouraging such trips,'' Russell said. ``When it comes to migrant voyages, it is a fact that people die.''