A haven for refugees turns into a place of terror
Behind the barbed wire and chain-link fences at Fort McCoy, in the bucolic farm land of western Wisconsin, young Hispanic men have stripped off their shirts because of the sweltering summer heat. But when asked what the 5,000 Cuban refugees at the sprawling Army base need most, Tómas Rodriguez, president of their governing council, replies: "Warm clothing for the cold weather that is coming." Has he no hope, then, that most of them will be resettled before winter? "No," answers Rodriguez. "If we were to say yes, we would be fooling ourselves."
Chances are that he is right. Fort McCoy once was the gateway to a new life for Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro's island; almost 10,000 have passed through and been placed with American sponsors. Now it is a kind of prison, an extreme example of the difficulties the U.S. faces in assimilating the last of the 120,000 Cubans who have flooded the country since April, emblematic of some of the reasons for the despair that has driven a handful of refugees to hijack American airliners to Havana. The seventh U.S. hijacking in 26 days occurred last week.
The Cubans still at Fort McCoy are a hard-core remnant of the boatlift. More than 90% of them are single men aged 18 to 35 with no relatives in the U.S., few job skills and no knowledge of English; many are barely literate even in Spanish. Some came from Cuban jails or mental hospitals. Among the inmates are 266 juveniles under 18 who are caught in a bureaucratic snarl. They cannot be adopted by American families under a federal administrative ruling that would require the consent of their parents, who are still in Cuba and cannot be reached. Nor can the youths be enrolled in foster-care programs even if they have relatives living in the U.S.; if the teen-agers need long-term counseling, as many may, and the foster parents cannot provide it, the financial burden would fall on a state. Wisconsin and other states claim that they lack the money; Washington has promised to pay but has not sent any cash yet.
Idle, bored and facing indefinite confinement, some of the refugees have turned Fort McCoy into a place of terror. Barely a week goes by without a stabbing incident; there are repeated reports of homosexual and heterosexual rape. Fear of revenge keeps most of the victims from complaining to camp authorities. Monroe County Circuit Court Judge James W. Rice says that one boy who appeared in his court seeking release from the camp "told me that he had a knife held to his throat by a group of older boys. They demanded that he commit a homosexual act." The youth was sent to live with relatives in Florida. Some Cubans also have slashed themselves to gain admittance to the safety of the camp hospital. One young man with deep knife cuts in his left forearm told TIME Correspondent Steven Holmes: "I did it to myself, to get attention."