Twenty-five Cubans held on a Coast Guard cutter after the drowning of a six-year-old migrant child last month have been sent home.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter docked Thursday at a Cuban port to return 25 Cubans intercepted in the Florida Straits during a smuggling voyage last month that ended when the boat carrying them capsized and a six-year-old child drowned.

The crew of the Coast Guard cutter Key Biscayne deposited the 25 Cubans at the port of Bahía de Cabañas, in western Cuba, at 10 a.m. Thursday, according to a Coast Guard statement issued in Miami.

REVIEW POLICY

The repatriation capped one of the most tragic Cuban migrant smuggling incidents in recent years, one that resonated throughout South Florida's Cuban-American community. It sparked renewed calls by exile leaders for the scrapping of the ''wet foot-dry foot'' policy under which Cubans stopped at sea are repatriated while those who make it to shore stay.

Many Cuban exiles would like a return to the previous practice under which the Coast Guard rescued Cuban migrants at sea and automatically brought them to the United States. Cuban authorities, for their part, argue that the ''wet foot-dry foot policy'' encourages illegal and dangerous sea-faring departures by an increasing number of Cuban migrants.

TRAGEDY A `LESSON'

Coast Guard officials said Thursday that the Oct. 13 tragedy should serve as a lesson to discourage any future risky voyages by Cuban migrants.

''Each time this happens there is a lesson to be learned,'' said Petty Officer Dana Warr, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami. ``These voyages are always risky, always dangerous. It shows the disregard for life on the part of the smugglers.''

Thursday's repatriation came one day after two Miami men, accused of being the organizers of the voyage, pleaded guilty in federal court to smuggling 29 Cubans in the speedboat that overturned, causing the death of 6-year-old Julián Villasuso.

They face as many as six years in prison.

PARENTS STAY

The parents of the dead child were brought ashore with Julián's body and have been allowed to stay. Another migrant on the boat, who showed signs of appendicitis, also was brought ashore. The remaining 25 migrants had been held aboard the cutter pending a decision by immigration and other federal authorities in Washington on whether to bring them ashore, send them to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo for resettlement in a third country or repatriate them.

Cuban migrants intercepted at sea have been repatriated since the mid-1990s when the United States and Cuba worked out an immigration accord under which the United States agreed to provide about 20,000 visas a year to Cuban immigrants in exchange for Havana ending the rafter exodus that brought more than 37,000 Cubans to the United States in 1994.

The latest tragedy unfolded Oct. 13 when a Coast Guard vessel pursued a 33-foot smuggling boat some 45 miles south of Key West. During the chase the boat capsized, and its 31 passengers were thrown into the water -- including the two smugglers.