BY JOAQUIM UTSET
 El Nuevo Herald

 Mariano Faget, the former official of the U.S. Immigration and
 Naturalization Service charged with violating the Espionage Act, will
 remain in prison until his trial begins April 24 in Miami.

 Federal judge Barry Garber on Tuesday denied him a second request
 for release on bond.

 Faget's attorney, Edward O'Donnell, said the case brought by the
 Department of Justice against his client did not show that he is a spy
 for Cuba, much less a danger to national security. Therefore, O'Donnell
 said, Faget deserved to be released on bond before his trial.

 Faget, 54, who worked for 30 years for the INS until his spectacular
 arrest Feb. 17,was charged with violating the Espionage Act when on
 Feb. 11 he told a friend and partner in a Cuba-related business
 enterprise that a Cuban diplomat planned to defect to the United
 States.

 But the tip was a fabrication, a ``sting'' by the FBI, which also
 videotaped meetings between Faget and Cuban diplomats. Faget did
 not inform his superiors at the INS about those meetings.

 Richard Gregorie, senior litigation counsel at the U.S. Attorney's Office
 in Miami, on Tuesday restated government charges that Faget was
 recruited by the Cuban intelligence service and delivered information
 to agents from Havana.

 ``Nothing has changed in this case'' since the first request for release
 on bond, Gregorie said.

 Faget conceded after his arrest that he told friend Pedro Font -- his
 Cuban-American partner in a trading company called America-Cuba --
 about the confidential information conveyed to him by the FBI. But
 Faget's attorney called his client's action ``an error in judgment''
 lacking evil intent, not an act of espionage.

 Faget's phone call to Font is the main incriminatory element in the
 government's case against Faget, which has raised doubts about the
 case's strength. The FBI in late March conceded that it exaggerated
 Faget's arrest by calling it the ``False Blue Cuban Spy Case'' and
 describing it as the arrest of a spy in the service of the Cuban
 government.

 Gregorie on Tuesday denied that his office is finding it difficult to
 prove that Faget spied for Havana.

 ``That information is not correct,'' he said.