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By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com.Posted on Sat,
Mar. 30, 2002 in The Miami Herald
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - While Pentagon blueprints anticipate the
jailing of as many as 2,000 international terrorism suspects here, complementary
contingency plans still consider this U.S. Navy base the premier place to house
up to 10,000 Caribbean boat people in case of a huge humanitarian crisis.
Under the plan, some Cubans or Haitians who try to flee their homeland for
Florida by sea would be sheltered in tents erected just up the coast from the
now skeletal, sprawling off-shore U.S. detention center for the suspected
members of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Contractors are already building the first compound of 408 cells, to be
ready April 12 for the 300 men now living in cage-like cells at Camp X-Ray,
closer to the Cuban border. The Pentagon has also submitted plans to Congress
for 408 more cells in a phased detention center expansion that could reach 2,040
-- plus the 320 cages at Camp X-Ray.
But even as those plans are under way, commanders here say other Department
of Defense blueprints -- updated this year to complement the terrorism project
-- still designate this 45-square-mile base in southeast Cuba as the base of
operations for a huge "migrant surge.''
Commanders say the unofficial, so-called balsero season starts in May, when
waters are most favorable for a raft ride to Florida. But Cubans and Haitians
have attempted the trip year-round, sometimes stirred to the sea by political or
economic turmoil in their homelands.
''You can still do both in Gitmo. They would not be in the same facility,''
said Marine Maj. Steve Cox, a spokesman for the prison project from Camp
LeJeune, N.C. His Marine Corps force is entrusted with a contingency planning
document on how to handle a migrant crisis.
In 1995 and 1996, more than 55,000 boat people passed through this base,
both Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea while trying to reach the United
States. At the height, boat people overwhelmed Guantánamo Bay to the
extent that sailors' families were evacuated and tents were set up at both an
abandoned airstrip and the scrubby golf course.
Since then, no more than 40 migrants at a time have been housed here under a
Clinton administration policy that mostly repatriates Haitians and Cubans after
shipboard interviews to identify those who may qualify for asylum.
Officers here decline to comment on either the wisdom or implications of
housing boat people, considered humanitarian cases, alongside people suspected
of being international criminals. They say it is safe enough since some 400
family members of soldiers, sailors and contractors also live here, and never
contemplated evacuation with the Jan. 11 arrival of the first Taliban and al
Qaeda prisoners.
Under the government's plan, land abutting the detention center could
accommodate 7,500 rafters, and space can be found elsewhere on the base for
another 2,500, perhaps back on the golf course, said Navy Capt. Bob Buehn, the
base commander.
About 5,000 people live on the base today. It supplies its own drinking
water. Cuba had previously supplied utilities. The Navy embarked on a campaign
of self-sufficiency in the early 1960s after Fidel Castro protested that the
U.S. military presence here was an illegal occupation of Cuban soil.
If water becomes scarce, Buehn said, the base can power up a diesel plant to
desalinate a million more gallons a day.
There has been no formal word on whether the Bush administration intends to
use Guantánamo Bay as a Nuremberg of sorts and hold military tribunals on
the base under guidelines announced this week by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld. | 
