Immigration Article of the Day: ‘Brisas Del Mar’: Judicial and Political Outcomes of the Cuban Rafter Crisis in Guantánamo by Christina M. Frohock

‘Brisas Del Mar’: Judicial and Political Outcomes of the Cuban Rafter Crisis in Guantánamoby Christina M. Frohock University of Miami – School of Law2012Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 15, pp. 39-83, 2012

Abstract: This Article casts a current eye on events in Guantánamo before September 11, 2001, exploring two contrasting outcomes of the U.S. government’s housing of more than 33,000 Cuban rafters intercepted at sea in August 1994. One outcome arose in the judicial sphere. This discussion focuses on the lawsuit the Cuban rafters filed while in Guantánamo, identifying themselves as refugees and seeking constitutional due process rights. In Cuban American Bar Association, Inc. v. Christopher, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied relief to the “migrants” in “safe haven.” Yet in post-9/11 decisions, including Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court granted constitutional privileges to another group in Guantánamo: enemy combatants seeking habeas corpus rights. A different outcome arose in the political sphere. This discussion focuses on the Cuban refugees’ desperate departures from their homeland and difficult lives in Guantánamo camps. Newly revealed documents from the CABA litigation, including thousands of handwritten requests for counsel, show the refugees’ frustration and despair in their own words. After a year in Guantánamo camps, they finally received humanitarian parole. This Article argues that the outcome in each sphere was appropriate given how each depicted the facts, with migrants denied constitutional rights and refugees granted entry into the United States.

KJ