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The Miami
Herald, March 19, 2002.
Cuba: U.S. should be anti-drug ally
By Juan O. Tamayo. [email protected].
Cuba said Monday it had deported an accused American drug trafficker and
could deport a Colombian smuggler wanted by the United States as a challenge to
Washington to step up cooperation on narcotics interdiction with the island.
''The U.S. government now has the chance to show that it is really ready to
undertake the fight against these grave scourges of humanity with seriousness
and without double standards,'' a Foreign Ministry statement read.
U.S. officials said the offer was part of a Cuban campaign to erode U.S.
sanctions by painting the communist government as a potential partner in the U.S
war on drugs and a profitable market for U.S. exports.
In recent years, Cuba has deported 5 to 10 U.S. citizens wanted for crimes
such as drug trafficking, child molesting and robbery, U.S. officials said. But
it has refused to deport about 70 others wanted for crimes that Cuba considers
political.
''They tend to send back the kind of people that neither they nor us like
very much,'' said one State Department official with long experience in Cuban
affairs.
The Foreign Ministry statement said Jesse James Bell, wanted on 15 U.S
drug-related charges, was deported to the United States on Jan. 12. Bell was not
further identified, but Cuban officials said he was from North Carolina.
U.S. officials said the Cubans arrested Bell on migration violations last
fall and notified Washington. A check of records revealed he was wanted on drug
charges, and the State Department asked Cuba to deport him. A U.S. government
aircraft flew to Cuba to pick up Bell, they said.
The Cuban statement said police also detained Rafael Miguel Bustamante Bolaños,
wanted on drug charges in the United States and his native Colombia, on March 6
for using a false Venezuelan port to enter the island.
Cuba has long argued that its location astride key Caribbean drug-smuggling
routes could make it a key U.S. ally in narcotics interdictions operations --
but that it needs foreign technological resources and expertise.
Barry McCaffrey, a former U.S. drug policy chief, said after a visit to
Havana on March 3 that Cuba was ''an island of resistance'' to the drug
smugglers and recommended U.S. officials work more closely with Cuban
counternarcotics programs.
Border Patrol: 71 Cuban migrants smuggled into Florida Keys
KEY WEST, Fla. - (AP) -- Smugglers brought 71 Cuban migrants to the Florida
Keys over a 29-hour period last week, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
A group of 18 migrants landed in Marathon near mile marker 47 on Friday.
Officials took 10 men, seven women and a child into custody.
Later that night, Border Patrol agents took two Cuban men suspected to be
the smugglers into custody.
A group of 28 migrants were found in Key Largo early Saturday and, hours
later, a second group of 25 migrants landed at mile marker 73.5, officials said.
Thirty-one men, 16 women and six children were taken into custody from those
groups.
Cubans who reach American soil generally are allowed to stay while those
intercepted at sea are repatriated.
The Coast Guard picked up more than 1,900 Cuban migrants last year. | 
