BY JAY WEAVER

 Federal investigators say the traffic of human cargo from Cuba to the United States has gone from bad to worse -- and more people are dying.

 "We've never seen anything like this year,'' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Diaz, who prosecutes smuggling cases. ``Greed is a motivator. The more you can jam on a boat, the more money you can make.''

 Diaz said smugglers are charging $8,000 to $10,000 per person, squeezing as many people -- including children and babies -- into their speedboats.

 So far this year, at least 10 people, including three small children, are believed to have died after stepping aboard U.S.-bound smuggling boats.

 All this is happening despite a multiagency task force created by the federal government this year to attack migrant smuggling and a U.S. attorney who promises to
 prosecute anyone caught profiting from others' misery.

 ``It is a priority because trafficking in human cargo is not only illegal but dangerous and deadly,'' First Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Sabin said.

 The Coast Guard spent Tuesday searching the Florida Straits for survivors of a capsized boat believed to have carried about 30 people, including at least 11 children and an 8-month-old, according to relatives. Rescuers found only life jackets and debris.

 One relative in Miami said he had agreed to pay at least $8,000 for each of his family members to be brought to Florida in time for Thanksgiving.

 ``Those smugglers are not down there to get people off an island. They are down there to make money,'' U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Joe Mellia said. ``Unfortunately, people are losing their lives because of the criminals involved in alien smuggling.''

 The smuggling phenomenon is a byproduct of the U.S. migration policy dating to the rafter crisis in 1994. That year, more than 37,000 Cuban migrants were intercepted at sea, with most held in a refugee city at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

 To end the exodus, President Bill Clinton agreed to grant at least 20,000 visas a year to Cubans. But the U.S. government also mandated that refugees picked up at sea be returned to Cuba unless they could prove they had a ``well-founded fear of persecution.''

 About 2,300 Cuban migrants were intercepted by the Coast Guard from 1995 to 1998.

 But Cubans still took to the waters.

 In 1998, federal officials began allowing Cubans who made it onto U.S. shores to change their status from ``wet-foot'' to ``dry-foot'' aliens, qualifying for residency under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.

 ``The interdiction policy is what made the alien-smuggling business prosper -- it created a cottage industry,'' said Miami attorney Wilfredo Allen, who has represented both smuggling operators and migrants. ``Unfortunately, getting people out of Cuba is a business. Smuggling has become a cash cow.''

 Border Patrol agents have apprehended an average of 2,150 Cubans who have reached U.S. shores during each of the past three years -- 17 times greater than the total in 1998.

 ``I would say 95 percent of the apprehension is alien smuggling,'' Mellia said.

 Almost all Cuban migrants are released because they qualify to apply for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act.

 Federal prosecutors say at least 144 people have been convicted on alien-smuggling charges since 1998, most of them involving smuggling people across the Florida
 Straits. Three people have been acquitted, prosecutors say.

 Federal prosecutors, like Diaz, have joined forces with the Border Patrol, Coast Guard, Customs Service and FBI to try to shut down alien smuggling from Cuba and other Caribbean countries.

 Federal grand juries are now sifting through evidence of illegal smuggling between Cuba and Florida.

 Prosecutors are considering seeking the death penalty against two Miami-Dade County men whose alleged smuggling run in August left six people dead when their boat flipped in rough seas.

 ``The smugglers are fueled by greediness. It's time that the locals understand this, that this is no way to seek freedom for their family members,'' Coast Guard spokesman Luis Diaz said.

 Herald staff writer Jennifer Babson contributed to this report.

                                    © 2001