“Marielitos”

The Cuban Excluclables

As the Mariel entrants continued adjusting to life in the United States—and many became successful in business, education, the arts, and other professions—the “Marielito” stigma was applied almost exclusively to a group of 2,746 boatlift participants who were classified as “excludable” by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and detained upon arrival in the United States. The main reason for their exclusion and detention was the fact that most had committed crimes in Cuba and therefore had to be kept in captivity until they completed their sentences in U.S. prisons or were deemed admissible to the country by a U.S. court.

The detention of this group stirred a major controversy and created a legal dilemma for the U.S. government, since (a) they had been invited to the United States by President Carter, who allowed the boatlift to continue for 5 months; (b) they were imprisoned for crimes committed in a foreign country, a country that the United States did not even recognize; (c) they were detained indefinitely, without specific charges; (d) prison conditions were considered “deplorable” and “shameful” by national and international human rights groups; and (e) they were denied a speedy trial by a jury of their peers. Even worse, most were never charged nor tried in the United States.

The detention, exclusion, and treatment of this group represented a sharp reversal in the traditional “open arms” U.S. immigration policy of welcoming and admitting virtually all Cuban migrants as political refugees. Cubans are also privileged by the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows Cubans entering the United States, by any means, the right to permanent resident status 1 year and 1 day after their arrival. The Mariel detainees, however, were not protected by the act, since they were never officially admitted to the United States.

A Question of Human Rights

The U.S. government justified the extreme measures taken against the detainees by claiming that it had been overwhelmed by the more than 125,000 Cubans who arrived during the Mariel boatlift and because it feared that Castro had intentionally sent hardened criminals on the boatlift to export Cuba's crime problems to the United States. Although there was some truth to the latter, 98% of all boatlift entrants were hardworking, law-abiding citizens. The harsh treatment of the detainees and their detention without trial, however, represented a gross violation of U.S. civil rights and universal human rights.

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