Group set off on Sunday for U.S.

 BY ELAINE DE VALLE

 After scouring 31,400 square miles of water over the course of about 36 hours, the Coast Guard suspended its search Thursday evening for 10 Cuban migrants, including a 3-year-old girl.

 The extensive search -- which included 12 missions in three aircraft and several vessels -- was launched Wednesday, after family members of the migrants reported that their relatives and others departed from Carahatas, Cuba, early Sunday on a 20-foot boat, said Petty Officer Gene Smith.

 The family members also said the boat, which was expected to land between Key Largo and Miami, has a 15-horsepower outboard motor, Smith said, adding that it did not fit the description of the speedboats typically used in migrant-smuggling operations.

 SEARCH AREA

 Smith said the search area extended from north of Port Canaveral south to Key West and east to the Bahamas and south to Cay Sal Banks and the Florida Straits. Capt. Mike Moore, chief of the search-and-rescue division at the Seventh District, said deciding to end the search was not easy.

 ``It's always a difficult decision to suspend a search, especially when children are involved,'' Moore said.

 Smith said he did not know why the search was called off after about 36 hours, when another intensive search in November lasted four days.

 ``I can't answer that question. That was Captain Moore's decision. I know that we flew 12 missions, and it was a pretty comprehensive search,'' he said.

 GREAT DANGER

 ``People need to let them know they are putting their lives at risk every time they get into an unseaworthy, or unsafe, or underpowered, or overcrowded vessel,'' Smith said. ``It's just really sad. I don't know if they consider the risk.''

 That risk is something Angela Acosta warned her son about many, times, she said.

 ``I always told him to wait, that I had sponsored him as his mother. For him to wait, to never throw himself into the ocean. Never,'' said Acosta, 50, who arrived in the United States after getting a lottery visa in 1997.

 Her son, Nelson Miguel Rodriguez, 32, left Cojimar at 5 a.m. Sunday on a boat with his brother-in-law, Roberto Consuegra, also in his early 30s. The two men, who fish and net shrimp for a living, did not return.

 Acosta got a call from her son's wife Monday to tell her the men were missing.

 When she called the U.S. Coast Guard to report the men missing, she was told the agency was already searching the area for a group of 10.

 She told that to her daughter-in-law when they spoke again Thursday. ``We are both asking each other, `Do you know anything? Do you know anything?' ''

 José Basulto, founder of the Brothers to the Rescue volunteer search-and-rescue outfit, said the two men might be in a separate group from the missing boat with 10. He said his organization received calls from several different relatives describing three different groups that had left the island over the weekend.

 Those who called about the group of 10 with the 3-year-old girl said they had left from Villa Clara province, on Cuba's northern shore -- not Cojimar, which is in Havana province.

 Another boat with 10 adults and six children reportedly departed from Herradura, in Pinar del Rio province, he said.

 FLIGHTS BY BROTHERS

 On Tuesday, a Brothers plane searched the Florida Straits and the Marquesas and Basulto said the organization planned to send another small plane today or Saturday to search again. But he hoped the Coast Guard would reconsider and resume its efforts.

 ``They are better at this,'' Basulto said. ``They have more resources. They can cover a wider range.''

 Smith, the Coast Guard petty officer, said he did not know whether any of the groups was among the 27 migrants intercepted on Monday and repatriated Thursday.

                                    © 2002