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The zigzags in Carter's Cuban refugee policy were understandable, if not exactly admirable. The Administration had tried to get tough by threatening fines against the refugee-carrying boatmen when the exodus first began. But the number of exiles exceeded all expectations, and the frenzy it created among some 800,000 Cuban Americans made it seem impractical to block the exodus. Admitted Presidential Assistant Jack Watson, who is coordinating the ten agencies involved in handling the refugees: "We decided then it would be counterproductive to enforce the laws." But when Castro kept dumping criminals and derelicts into the American boats, along with the legitimate refugees, many of the Cuban Americans were appalled. Contended Watson: "Castro convinced Cuban Americans that they were being emotionally toyed with."
By last week Carter felt the Cuban Americans would support an end to the ragtag boatlift. Beyond close relatives, he cited three other groups who would be entitled to come to America: 1)the roughly 11,000 Cubans who had rushed into the Peruvian embassy in April to seek visas, touching off the mass exodus; 2) some 380 who are still living in the former U.S. embassy building in Havana, after being attacked by Castro strongmen earlier this month; 3) "political prisoners who have been held by Castro for many years." But not all Cuban-American leaders were pleased by this third switch of policy. Protested Antonio de Varona, president of the Cuban Patriotic Junta, a coalition of exile groups: "The President should have done all this three weeks ago. Now it plays right into Castro's hands. He'll continue to play games with us."
Castro seemed to be doing just that. He made no reply at all to Carter's air-and sealift offer, and there was great doubt that he would ever permit the U.S. to pick and choose among the people he was willing to deport. Declared the Cuban newspaper Granma: "Carter governs in Florida, but in Mariel, Cuba governs." The newspaper even claimed that the existing boatlift from Mariel to Florida was "the safest, most efficient one in the world." More than 20 Cubans have died in the journey so far, including three last week who had crowded with 27 others into a small cabin on the 36-ft. cruiser Sunshine. Two of them died of suffocation, and one from engine exhaust fumes.
The continuing storm over the Cuban refugees stirred up a related controversy over the Administration's treatment of Haitians who have also fled by boat from their poverty-stricken homeland. Senator Edward Kennedy, Carter's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, convened his Senate Judiciary Committee to assail Carter's handling of the whole refugee problem. But he aimed his sharpest barbs at what he considered the Administration's less hospitable attitude toward the black Haitians, asking: "Does the open arms the President talked about include the Haitians or doesn't it?"