MIAMI, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Thirty-four Cuban nationals were found on the south Florida coast on Thursday, most of them believed to have been brought ashore by smugglers, the U.S. Border Patrol said.
A group of 31 -- 15 men, nine women and seven children -- were picked up at Islamorada in the Florida Keys. They told U.S. agents they had paid a Cuban smuggler $1,000 a person for transport across the Florida Straits from the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, Border Patrol spokesman Dan
Geoghegan said.
``They claim he was a Cuban boat captain who went back to Cuba. That's not likely,'' Geoghegan said. ``More than likely he was a Cuban who lives in the United States.''
U.S.-based smugglers often drop their human cargo on a remote Florida shore then take their boats a short distance away, put them on trailers and drive home to Miami, agents say.
In addition to the 31, a group of three Cubans, a father, mother and child, were found early on Thursday at Crandon Park Marina on Key Biscayne near Miami.
The latest arrivals came in the midst of a fierce political and legal tug of war for 6-year-old Cuban boat boy Elian Gonzalez, who was found by fishermen floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast in November. His mother was one of 11 people who drowned in an ill-fated migration bid.
Thousands of Cuban migrants have made the 100-mile (160-km) trip across the Florida Straits in small boats since Cuban President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Under current U.S. immigration policy, those who are intercepted at sea are usually returned to the communist-ruled island, while those who manage to set foot on U.S. shores are generally allowed to stay.
The family found on Key Biscayne told authorities they had left Havana on a small wooden boat on Wednesday but the boat started to sink en route. They were picked up by a U.S. vessel and brought to Miami, they said.
But Geoghegan said the landing appeared to have been staged. Cuban migrants often are smuggled to the United States undetected and spend time with relatives in Miami before staging landings to declare their presence.
``They were in good health,'' Geoghegan said. ``They were probably smuggled to the United States some time ago and they were now just making their dramatic entrance.''
Staged beach landings are designed to be more dramatic and generate more sympathy for the new arrivals, and they also conceal the areas where smugglers are most successful landing aliens, authorities said.
Smuggling is a federal crime punishable by the death penalty if any immigrant is killed during a smuggling run.
Sixty-three Cubans have landed in Florida so far in January compared to 240 in the same month last year.
19:35 01-20-00
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