THE UNITED STATES HOLDS CUBAN MIGRANTS HOSTAGE

This from the Associated Press:

2 Cuban migrants quit Gitmo hunger strike
Posted on Wed, Aug. 08, 2007

By MICHAEL MELIA
Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Two Cuban migrants held the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay quit a hunger strike after being hospitalized with health problems, a Miami-based exile group said Wednesday.
Twenty other migrants were keeping up the strike that began July 29 to protest their conditions and Washington's refusal to let them settle in the United States, said Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Miami-based exile group Democracy Movement.
The strikers voted against the pair rejoining them because of their ''very precarious'' condition -- one had a blood clot in his lung and the other suffered a hypoglycemic seizure, said Sanchez, who said he regularly speaks with the migrants by telephone.
A medical team has been evaluating some 20 people on ''voluntary fast,'' said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. ``They all appear to be in good health.''
Under Washington's so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans who make it to U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay, while those caught at sea are sent home.
The protesters are among 44 Cubans captured at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard but could not be returned to Cuba because authorities determined they had a credible fear of persecution. They have been detained at Guantánamo -- some for more than two years -- while the U.S. seeks to settle them in a third country.
Some have complained about head counts and aggressive searches for contraband.
''They're treating them as if they were criminals,'' said Lidiar Reyes, whose brother Duniel Reyes, 23, was picked up the Coast Guard in May and taken to Guantánamo. ``He left Cuba to get away from a place like that.''
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez defended searches of the migrants, saying they have turned up contraband, including pornography, knives and scissors.
''Our priority is the safety and security of all the protected migrants that live at the Migrant Operations Center,'' she said.
The Cubans have no contact with the approximately 360 men detained in another section of Guantánamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.