BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES AND MARIKA LYNCH

 While it's true that the Cuban immigration detainees who have taken over a
 Louisiana jail have been behind bars for years and years, not all of that time has
 been spent awaiting deportation.

 Second-degree murder, burglary and cocaine trafficking are among the crimes for
 which the Cuban hostage-takers were convicted in Miami.

 Jonne Ponte Landrian, one of the ringleaders who told a television reporter in the
 initial hours of the takeover that he has been detained for 13 years, has spent a
 combined five years in Florida prisons.

 Ponte Landrian came to the United States in the 1980 Mariel boatlift. He was
 arrested July 9, 1989, in Miami-Dade County for burglarizing an occupied building
 and was sentenced to seven years. He was released Feb. 4, 1992, and was
 picked up by immigration agents later that year.

 On Feb. 22, 1995, Ponte Landrian was arrested again in Miami-Dade for
 aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and grand theft of a motor vehicle.
 He was sentenced to a three-year term. On July 23, 1997, he was released into
 INS custody.

 Marta Landrian, his mother, said he called her soon after the jail takeover began
 Monday to tell her not to worry. They last spoke about 10 p.m. Tuesday, when he
 told her all he wants is to be deported.

 ``His father died and they wouldn't let him go to the funeral,'' Landrian said. ``His
 niece died and they didn't let him go. It traumatized him a lot, and I think it
 happened because of that.''

 Among the other hostage-takers:

 Roberto Villar Grana, 31, who was sentenced in federal court in Miami in April
 1994. He received 47 months on a cocaine-trafficking charge. He was released
 from a federal prison in West Virginia on Jan. 1, 1997, and turned over to the INS.

 Lazaro Orta Elisalte, 48, who was convicted of second-degree murder for the May
 21, 1988, stabbing death of a man in an Overtown bar.

 In 1997, Orta was among the first wave of 500 murderers, rapists, robbers and
 other felons who walked away from Florida prisons before the end of their
 sentences because of earned ``gain time.''