Cuban car-boat family to stay in Florida -- for now
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This craft, fashioned from a 1959 Buick, was Luis Grass Rodriguez's second improvised boat.
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MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A Cuban family caught at sea on a floating 1959 Buick will not be returned to Cuba for at least two more days, a judge decided Monday.
U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno extended an order while attorneys for the federal government and the family continue to examine immigration law and policies. They are expected to file papers Tuesday and Moreno hopes to rule Wednesday.
Luis Grass Rodriguez, his wife and 4-year-old son are among 11 people found on the Buick off the Florida Keys last week. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee said the Coast Guard may be in a position to repatriate the other eight on Tuesday.
Grass Rodriguez and his family are exempt -- for now -- from being sent back to Cuba because he had started a process in the hopes of emigrating legally to the United States after a similar attempt to reach the U.S. coast in a vehicle-to-boat conversion failed last summer.
He came within 65 kilometers (40 miles) of the U.S. coast in a 1951 pickup truck in July before immigration officials spotted the vehicle and sent the group home.
U.S. policy normally allows Cubans to stay only if they reach U.S. soil. Others intercepted at sea are sent back to Cuba by the Coast Guard. In a Key West case that drew a fine line, the difference was between being on a docked boat and standing on the dock.
Moreno asked for a copy of a 1995 migration accord adopted by the United States and Cuba and the current state of the law on aliens arriving on dry land or reaching territorial waters.
Lee argued that a federal appeals court and another federal judge in Miami have concluded legal entry for immigration purposes requires reaching dry land.
Copyright 2004 The
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