A Coast Guard vessel that rescued 15 Cuban migrants from an unused Keys bridge in January started to bring them ashore, but then was ordered to halt.

By ALFONSO CHARDY

Fifteen Cuban migrants picked up at an abandoned bridge were being brought ashore in the Florida Keys when -- in a span of 20 minutes -- the Coast Guard's legal experts in Miami had second thoughts and ordered the boat to halt, Coast Guard logs reveal.

The logs, released by the Coast Guard in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Miami Herald, mark the first time the federal government publicly acknowledges it waffled on what to do soon after the migrants were found in the pre-dawn darkness of Jan. 4, on a piling of the Old Flagler Bridge near Marathon.

The entries from the Coast Guard station in Marathon to sector headquarters in Key West expose the unfolding drama -- and dilemma -- of the most controversial Cuban migrant rescue since the wet-foot, dry-foot policy took effect more than a decade ago when Cuba and the United States struck a migration deal to end a rafter exodus.

The migrants were held offshore for five days while officials in Miami and Washington struggled to decide what to do.

It took 20 minutes, the logs reveal, for the lives of the 15 migrants to take a fateful turn -- one that eventually denied them their wish to reunite with relatives and that sent them back to a life they no longer wanted and a country they thought they had left for good.

One family lost a home in Cuba and another migrant a good job. But family members in South Florida are now hopeful that a Miami federal judge's decision Tuesday will bring their relatives back.

Repatriation of the 15 -- including a toddler and a 13-year-old boy -- angered South Florida's Cuban exile community and set the stage for a possible change of the policy under which Cubans intercepted at sea are generally sent back and those who reach U.S. soil are usually allowed to stay. Miami federal Judge Federico Moreno ruled Tuesday that the bridge, even if not connected to land, is part of Florida and that the migrants ''were removed to Cuba illegally.'' He ordered the Bush administration to take steps to bring them back.

WHAT LOGS SAID

The log entries showing the Coast Guard wavered on bringing the Cubans ashore did not figure into the case, though Moreno's court received the documents.

Although written in the stilted shorthand of official radio talk, the entries convey the drama that unfolded two days after the Cubans -- 11 men, two women and the two boys -- set out for South Florida on a makeshift 20-foot aluminum boat. The Coast Guard determined the boat ''a hazard'' and sank it.

Two relatives in Miami, Mercedes Hernández and Mariela Conesa, told The Miami Herald on Wednesday that the 15 included families as well as neighbors and friends -- all from Matanzas, a city on Cuba's northern coast east of Havana.

Hernández and Conesa said group members organized the trip themselves and were not part of a migrant smuggling operation. The women spoke at the Miami office of their immigration attorney, Wilfredo Allen.

Hernández, 42, said her niece, Elizabeth Hernández, 23, the niece's husband, Junior Blanco, 28, and their son Michael, 2 ½, could not return to their home in Matanzas after they were repatriated because Cuban government officials had seized the house and sealed the door.

Conesa, 35, said her husband, Marino Hernández, and their 13-year-old son, Osniel, are back living in the same house they shared with other relatives -- but Marino Hernández lost his job maintaining restaurant and hotel equipment.

''My son was crying last night when I told him what the judge has ordered,'' said Conesa. 'He was so happy. He said, `Mami, I will soon be there to join you.' ''

The Cubans were expected to visit the U.S. Interests Section in Havana early next week to review the official steps required to leave Cuba, said Miami lawyer Kendall Coffey, a member of the legal team representing the 15 Cuban migrants.

WHAT HAPPENED

The Coast Guard learned of the migrants when it was notified by the Monroe County's Sheriff's Office at 3:05 a.m. on Jan. 4.

Marathon station dispatched a 41-foot rescue vessel, identified in the logs as CG41329. Initially, the migrants refused rescue, perhaps fearing their ultimate fate.

A second vessel, CG25577, was sent to assist and eventually all the migrants were loaded aboard the first boat.

A log entry for 3:40 a.m. notes that the rescue boat was directed by sector headquarters in Key West ''to bring migrants back to station'' in Marathon. Had the boat been allowed to dock at Marathon, the migrants would have had it made -- automatically qualifying as ''dry foot'' and allowed to stay.

But a log entry 20 minutes later, at 4 a.m., shows a counterorder ''not to bring migrants to station until . . . word'' was received from the Coast Guard's Miami headquarters, known as D-7 for district seven.

MORE INFORMATION

Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami, said initially ''legal staff'' at Miami district headquarters had been told the migrants had landed on a bridge.

''So they assumed they were feet dry,'' O'Neil said. ``But as more information came in and it became clear the bridge was not connected to land, the same legal staff at district seven reversed the original order and sought clarification at higher levels.''

A key document before Judge Moreno's court was a Jan. 4 memo from Lt. Cmdr. Donald L. Brown, of the Coast Guard's legal office in Miami, to Lt. Cmdr. Brad Keiserman, chief of the Coast Guard's operations law group in Washington. By 11:46 a.m., Brown was seeking legal guidance from Washington -- seven hours after the rescue boat was ordered to halt short of the Marathon coast and directed to transfer the migrants to the Coast Guard cutter Kodiak Island.

`NOT U.S. DRY LAND'

A Coast Guard spokesman in Washington, Lt. Gene Maestas, said at the time the decision was made by the Coast Guard's legal office in conjunction with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and possibly other federal agencies.

A Jan. 7 memo from Keiserman answered Brown's request whether the Cubans were feet wet or dry.

''It is my opinion that, as a matter of law, the man-made structure. . . upon which fifteen undocumented Cuban migrants alighted . . . is not U.S. dry land,'' Keiserman wrote.

That determination sealed the migrants' fate.

They were repatriated two days later, on Jan. 9 -- five days after they landed on the bridge and were almost brought ashore to ``dry land.''

Miami Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.