Homeland security???? You decide.
Former Coastie sends...
Armed Cuban border guards defect in Key West
BY JENNIFER BABSON
jbabson@herald.com
KEY WEST - Four heavily armed members of the Cuban Border Guard -- dressed in green fatigues and wearing black boots -- sprinted by boat early Friday to Key West, where they flagged down a police officer near the city's main entertainment strip and were taken into custody.
The men told a Key West police officer that they were patrolling Cuban waters in a speedboat when they decided to make a run for freedom.
When they arrived in Key West at about 4 a.m., the men tied up their boat at a hotel marina and set out on foot. The trip had taken three hours.
A Key West police officer spotted them walking around several blocks from where they docked. Affixed to the waistband of one of the men: A loaded, Chinese-made handgun. He was also carrying an extra magazine, police said.
The Cubans told another officer who interviewed them in Spanish that they were ``tired of the impoverished conditions and frustrated with not being able to own their homes.''
They also asked to telephone family members in Miami.
One of the men told police he was a 14-year veteran of Cuba's Border Guard.
Authorities had no trouble finding the boat in which the men made their voyage. Tied up in a hotel marina, it was affixed with a blue light bar and a Cuban flag. The boat is now moored at a Coast Guard station in Key West.
The boat's radio was also tuned to the Coast Guard's frequency, police said.
When police searched the speedboat, they found two AK-47s and eight fully loaded magazines containing about 240 bullets.
The men were taken into police custody and transported to the Monroe County Detention Center. Early Friday, they left Key West in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.
An Miami-based FBI spokeswoman said Friday morning that the bureau would also be interviewing the men.
The Coast Guard had no comment Friday morning about the incident.
''I can't say anything yet,'' said Luis Diaz, a Coast Guard spokesman. ``This is a very sensitive issue that has to go through the State Department.''
The U.S. State Department said it planned to issue a statement in a few hours.
''We are aware of the situation and we will have coment on the matter later this afternoon,'' said Robert Zimmerman, a spokesman for department's Western Hemisphere bureau.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said, ``The net that we have around the country -- in this case Coast Guard patroling -- is not 100 percent foolproof. That's the lesson.''
Nelson noted that the migrants in this case were ''not intent on harm,'' but were ``intent on freedom.''
Calls to a spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. were not immediately returned Friday.
The unusual landing was the second disturbing security breach in six days that the Coast Guard appears to have missed in the Keys.
On Saturday, five Cuban fishermen in a large state-owned boat bearing Spanish lettering motored right into a piece of U.S. Navy owned property in Key West in broad daylight.
The fishermen brought the stolen 40-foot boat between 150 and 200 yards from a massive cruiseship, jumped into a dinghy, and rowed 20 feet to shore, according to a Key West police officer who saw them land.
Not far from where the group reached shore is the secretive Joint Interagency Task Force East -- a key nerve center for the drug war that houses over 200 U.S. military officials, federal agents, and liason officers from Latin American countries.