Eight transferred to Key West for medical care

SANDRA MARQUEZ GARCIA, MARIKA LYNCH AND PAUL
 BRINKLEY-ROGERS

 Eight people who fled Cuba in a rickety crop-duster that was forced to ditch at
 sea achieved their goal of reaching the United States when they were brought to
 Key West on Wednesday night for medical evaluation.

 The refugees will be transferred to Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County
 early today for processing, said Patricia Mancha, an Immigration and
 Naturalization Service spokeswoman in Miami.

 Mancha said she couldn't immediately provide a reason for the Cubans' being
 allowed into the United States. A U.S. Navy flight surgeon recommended earlier
 Wednesday that they be brought ashore for medical treatment.

 The migrants will allowed to stay in the United States under the federal policy that
 permits any Cuban refugee who reaches dry land to remain. If they had been
 interviewed at sea by the INS, they could have been sent back to Cuba under the
 so-called ``wet foot, dry foot'' rule.

 ``If they actually touch U.S. soil, that automatically makes them `dry foot,' '' said
 Luis Cordero, an immigration lawyer with Holland & Knight. ``Then they are
 paroled, and the [Cuban Adjustment] Act kicks in a year later. You can't get any
 better than that.''

 There were conflicting signals throughout the tension-filled day about the refugees'
 fate, as the Cuban American National Foundation lobbied in Washington for the
 survivors' release, and both Havana officials and the FBI said the flight had not
 been hijacked.

 A lawyer and a publicist who represented the Miami family of young Elián
 González arrived in Key West to represent Rodolfo Fuentes, the one survivor
 already allowed into the United States for treatment on Tuesday night. And José
 Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue retained a Tampa lawyer to help the Hialeah
 relative of two of the plane passengers.

 ONE CRASH DEATH

 One man, still unidentified by federal authorities, died in the crash.

 The 36-year-old Fuentes, whose wife and child also were aboard the plane, is
 listed in guarded condition.

 The MV Chios Dream had been en route to New Orleans to pick up grain on
 Tuesday morning when the Russian-made Antonov AN-2 biplane circled nine
 times, then crashed into the ocean. The freighter picked up the refugees from the
 water.

 According to Havana air traffic controllers, the plane took off from a strip in Pinar
 del Rio in western Cuba at 8:45 a.m. and its pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias
 Hernandez, radioed that he was being ``kidnapped.'' Apparently, however, the pilot
 had picked up his family and relatives and was trying to flee Cuba.

 Late Tuesday, a doctor from the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Tropicale treated the
 migrants. Dr. Myron Binns, 41, said he was not told that the people he helped
 were Cubans who ``had fallen out of the sky'' until after he sutured Fuentes'
 wounds and had returned to his own vessel.

 He said he thought the group were vacationers because they were dressed like
 guests on the Tropicale. Binns described the Cubans as looking frightened and
 anxious but he said they calmed down after they discovered he was a physician.

 Throughout Wednesday, there were level exchanges about how to resolve the
 situation involving the State Department, the Coast Guard and the INS.

 The Coast Guard put a four-person party, including a flight surgeon, aboard the
 Chios Dream. Lower Keys medical center CEO Ron Bierman said the Coast
 Guard told him the flight surgeon had determined that the eight remaining on the
 ship needed to be taken to a hospital for medical attention.

 AGENCIES WAIT

 An FBI agent on the Coast Guard cutter Nantucket -- steaming close to the Chios
 Dream -- waited to interview the group. The INS also had personnel at sea with
 the Coast Guard to conduct routine shipboard asylum interviews.

 The migrants' South Florida relatives waited anxiously for word.

 Isidro Puig of Hialeah, whose sons Pabel, 27, and Judel, 23, were on the plane,
 said his ex-wife called him from Cuba to tell him about the crash.

 ``The worst went through my mind,'' Puig said. ``I just want to know if my sons are
 alive or dead.''

 Meanwhile, CANF officials -- in Washington for previously-scheduled talks with
 lawmakers -- began lobbying to prevent the migrants from being repatriated.

 CANF's leader, Joe Garcia, met with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who chairs the
 powerful Foreign Relations Committee. The two had planned to discuss the talks
 on migration between the United States and Cuba, scheduled to start today in
 New York City, but they also addressed the issue of the plane survivors.

 Publicist Armando Gutierrez, who represented Elián's Miami relatives, arrived in
 Key West with Elián legal team member Manny Diaz, saying the Miami relatives
 of the survivors had asked for their help.

 Also arriving in Key West was Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Cuban exile
 Democracy Movement, who also played a highly visible role during the Elián
 saga. Joining him was José Diaz, the mayor of Sweetwater, and Agustin Garcia,
 chairman of the Dade County Democratic Party.

 ``The same way that we criticize them [U.S. authorities] when they make a
 mistake, we will congratulate them when they do the right thing,'' said Arturo
 Cobo, 59, a Bay of Pigs veteran who until 1996 ran the now closed refugee center
 in Key West. He joined a small Cuban American vigil at the Key West hospital.

 HOPES RISE

 Hopes ran high at about 3 p.m., when Ron Bierman, the Key West medical
 center's CEO, said he had been told that the flight surgeon had determined that
 the eight survivors needed to be hospitalized.

 Bierman said the Coast Guard planned to bring the Cubans ashore about 7 p.m.,
 and said he had eight beds ready.

 But late in the afternoon, the Coast Guard, and the INS, continued to insist that
 no decision had been made to bring the people ashore.

 Diaz, who consulted with the hospitalized Fuentes, expressed jubilation when the
 facility's director said he was preparing more beds.

 ``Obviously, if that happens, that's great news,'' he said. ``Once they set foot on
 American soil they should be allowed to stay.''

 Herald staff writers Alfonso Chardy, Elinor J. Brecher, Carolyn Salazar, Eunice
 Ponce, Carol Rosenberg and Herald wire services contributed to this report.