General Warns of ‘Riots by July’ as Cubans Wait at Guantanamo

MIAMI —  Rising temperatures and fading hopes could touch off rioting this summer among some 20,000 Cuban rafters--most of them single men--being held in barren detention camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military chief of the U.S. Atlantic command warned Tuesday.

“We could have riots by July,” four-star Gen. John J. Sheehan, commander of U.S. forces in the Caribbean, said at a press conference here. “They need a sense of hope. My fear is that . . . we’re left with 20,000 young males, 25 to 32 years old.

“Clearly, if they have no hope of going anywhere . . . , their frustration level will increase. This is the wrong chemistry for men of that age.”

In Washington, meanwhile, government officials reiterated the Clinton Administration’s hard line on denying U.S. entry to most of last summer’s Cuban rafters. They insisted that Cuban exile leaders in Miami who say the migrants will end up here are wrong.

Privately, however, some Administration officials conceded that a policy of indefinite detention will have to change sometime.

To end a dangerous high-seas exodus from communist Cuba, the Administration in August reversed a longstanding open-door policy for Cuban immigrants and began detaining the rafters at Guantanamo Bay. Until recently, more than 32,000 Cubans were held there. Monday’s population was 23,881.

Some 6,300 U.S. military men and women are assigned to the Guantanamo camps, which cost $1 million a day to operate, Sheehan said.

In December, the Administration began to admit Cuban children, their families and those with medical problems to the United States.

But the frustration level remains high, Sheehan said, and escapes from the barbed-wire compounds are a nightly occurrence. Last month, 365 Cubans either jumped the fence or swam into Cuban waters, and so far in March, 115 have made it.

Although the 45-square-mile naval base is surrounded by minefields, few explosions are ever heard. “They seem to know the routes to take,” said Air Force Maj. Jack Fouts, a spokesman at the base.