BY ALFONSO CHARDY

A little more than a year ago, 15 Cuban migrants landed on an abandoned bridge near Marathon and were repatriated to Cuba because federal immigration authorities ruled they had not reached U.S. soil.

On Tuesday, six of those migrants ventured from Cuba, again, and made it to Higgs Beach in Key West. They were admitted into the United States hours later.

They joined seven others who made a similar trip from Cuba in December, bringing to 13 the number of Cuban migrants who successfully found their way back to U.S. soil after federal authorities ruled they were not eligible to remain here.

The remaining pair are still in Cuba, according to Cuban exile activists in Miami.

''We are very moved. At last we were able to get what we wanted to get,'' Elizabeth Hernández, 23, said in Spanish late Tuesday after a screening at a health clinic in Little Havana. ``And now, to struggle in a new country.''

The latest six were among 23 who reached Key West in a makeshift boat before dawn, said Victor Colón, a Border Patrol spokesman. The group included 14 adult men, six adult women and three minors.

They were taken to the U.S. Border Patrol station in Pembroke Pines for processing before being released.

''I was so worried and desperate this morning when I was told they were en route on this very feeble vessel,'' Mercedes Hernández, a Miami relative, told The Miami Herald in a telephone interview. ``I immediately went down to Key West to try to make sure they made it to land so they would not be returned again.''

Mercedes Hernández is the aunt of Elizabeth Hernández, who came Tuesday with her husband, Junior Blanco, and their 3-year-old son John Michael, as well as three other relatives of Junior. The other 17 migrants on the boat include a sister of Mercedes Hernández and her twin adult sons, along with their wives.

`A GREAT DAY'

''It's a great day,'' said Mercedes Hernández. ``I am so happy they made it to land safe and sound.''

Added her niece, Elizabeth: ``Thank God everything turned out all right.''

Mercedes said she knew the 23 were en route because she got a call from someone in Cuba who alerted her to the departure.

The arrival of the six migrants marked another chapter in a story that began in January 2006 when a group of migrants left Cuba in a makeshift vessel and landed on an abandoned bridge near Marathon.

The original 15, who landed in the predawn hours of Jan. 4, were held offshore by the U.S. Coast Guard for five days while officials in Miami and Washington decided what to do. At issue: whether the bridge -- no longer connected to land -- was part of the United States.

Federal officials eventually determined that the bridge was a man-made structure, not in U.S. territory, and sent all 15 back.

The decision angered South Florida's Cuban exile community. Exile activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez went on a 12-day hunger strike in protest. He was among the first to learn that six more of the 15 had arrived back.

Attorneys went to federal court after their clients were returned to Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno sided with the migrants and ordered the Bush administration to bring the repatriated people back. He found that the bridge remained part of Florida and thus the migrants ``were removed to Cuba illegally.''

14 GET PASSPORTS

Late last year, 14 of the 15 received passports from the Cuban government and notification from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana that they would be given humanitarian visas.

But the Cuban government had not given them the required exit visas. Some were told they would have to wait up to four years.

Miami Herald staff writer Evan S. Benn contributed to this report.