By Gretchen Keiser

For an estimated 1,700 Cubans, a long and dangerous boat trip from Mariel Harbor, Cuba to Key West, Florida will bring them to the long halls of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

Out of 130,000 who arrived in the boatlift, these men were among those separated at one point or another by immigration officials. Some had questions raised about their background in Cuba because they said they had prison records. Some came off the boats with shaved heads and wearing prison garb, but may have used the device to get on a boat leaving Cuba. Some were separated after further questioning by immigration officials at refugee camps, and others ended up in detention after disturbances in refugee camps.

Right now, 800 are being housed at the penitentiary, but as the Fort Chaffee, Ark. Refugee camp closes, an estimated 900 more will be moved to the turn-of-the-century, high security facility.

On the top floor, a former prison library has been converted into make-shift work quarters for immigration officials, a small team from the U.S. Catholic Conference and local volunteers. This group is doing the painstakingly slow work of reviewing each person’s case, trying to surmount language problems, cultural barriers, and the tensions and restriction of confinement to determine who might be a candidate for resettlement.

“There are 800 different needs here,” said Robert McCarthy, a lawyer for the U.S.C.C. who is in charge of the team.

“Some need medical help. Some need psychological help. Some need to get out of here,” he said.

The Catholic Conference is the only volunteer agency authorized to do resettlement work inside the prison. McCarthy, who has been in Atlanta since the end of October, says that the initial group of 800 includes some who are candidates for resettlement, some who would need a strong base of support services in any community before they could be resettled and some whose behavior or records preclude resettlement.

But the process of determining that in 800 cases proceeds will excruciating slowness and caution, as McCarthy, two U.S.C.C. psychologists and two caseworkers, work with staff loaned by immigration services and a small number of volunteers from the Atlanta Cuban and Catholic community.

The need for more volunteer help, including bilingual volunteers, but also those who could assist with clerical work, is extreme, McCarthy said.

Poised against the awesome task of those inside the prison are some of the individual stories that are gradually emerging:

An 18-year-old youth interviewed by one of the team members last Friday who says that he has been in Cuban correctional facilities since he was nine years old.

A man in his mid-thirties whose criminal record in Cuba was a six-year sentence for stealing a $47 radio. He had served six months in Cuba and now is indefinitely incarcerated in a maximum security U.S. penitentiary.

A man whose criminal record was a rape charge. His interview disclosed that he had been charged with statutory rape by his future father-in-law. The then 14-year-old girl is now his wife and mother of his two children. The age of legal consent to marriage in Cuba is twelve, McCarthy said.

There are also some in the group who were imprisoned in Cuba for violent crimes or who have been accused of violence in incidents in refugee camps in the United States, McCarthy said.

The process that goes on has two phases. First, the Cubans are considered detainees until they have been granted a hearing before a federal judge to determine whether they are eligible for political asylum. Of 500 such hearings already held, only about 20 have been granted asylum, cases judged to involve Cuban political prisoners.

The U.S.C.C. and the immigration service now face the remaining majority, housed in the cellblocks of the Atlanta Penitentiary. Barring some arrangement to return some of the people to Cuba, the only route out of the penitentiary is as parolees.

Both the U.S.C.C. staff, which reviews people by interview and psychological screening, and the immigration service, which is concerned primarily with any possible threat individuals may pose to society, have to agree that someone is a candidate for resettlement.

Before that stage is reached, the interview must take place, and a psychologist has to recommend that the person is a good candidate for resettlement. The immigration service then reviews the history and behavior in prison and refugee camps and must agree with the recommendation. Then a person to sponsor the Cuban must be found, evaluated and accepted by the diocesan agencies on the outside.

The alternative is indefinite incarceration in one of the highest security prisons in the country.

“Any prison is a horrible place. This prison is particularly oppressive (in structure),” McCarthy noted.

Because of the language difficulties and the arbitrary way people were separated at Key West and in camps, there are people in the penitentiary who shouldn’t be in a maximum security prison, he said. He characterized his job as “trying to separate the sheep from the wolves.”

“Some people feel because they’re not all sheep, we should forget about it,” he said. “You can’t do that. There are some very fine people in here. It’s a crime that they’re here.”

One of the local volunteers, Martha Antona, said, having come once to the prison to try and help, she and her husband have been unable to turn their backs on the plight of those inside. “They feel some relief after they talk to the Catholic Conference because they have some hope,” she said.

“I know many Cubans are very scared of the ones here,” said Mrs. Antona, who came to the United States with her husband during the first Cuban exodus 20 years ago.

“But I know, if you come once and talk to some of them, you have to come back. At least I know that is the way it happened to my husband and myself.”