Cuban-American exile leaders launched a campaign to convince the Bush administration to change the 'wet-foot, dry-foot' policy.

BY OSCAR CORRAL

South Florida's Cuban- American U.S. House members are launching a lobbying campaign to convince the Bush administration to change the controversial ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' immigration policy so that every migrant has access to a lawyer -- even those caught at sea.

With emotions still raw over the Coast Guard's repatriation of 15 Cubans who landed on pilings of an old, unused bridge in the Florida Keys, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sent a letter to the State Department and Homeland Security, asking federal officials to craft a new policy.

''We have witnessed a record number of human trafficking cases from Cuba, a dramatic increase of Cuban nationals attempting to flee the island, an extraordinary amount of refugees repatriated without regard for the merits of their asylum petitions, and, basically, an overall process that constitutes an embarrassment to the United States,'' said the letter, which was sent to Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Tom Shannon, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Cuban migrants picked up at sea are interviewed by the Coast Guard to determine if they qualify for political asylum. Most are returned to Cuba because they are unable to convince the Coast Guard that they are fleeing the island because of political persecution.

Diaz-Balart said he wants to make sure that every Cuban migrant picked up at sea gets legal representation.

''As a lawyer, I can tell you that legal rights are really not available to people without legal counsel,'' Diaz-Balart said.

CUBANS REPATRIATED

The announcement comes a day after the Coast Guard repatriated 15 Cubans who had been found standing on a piling of the old Flagler Bridge in the Florida Keys. That bridge is no longer in use, and the section the migrants were on is no longer connected to land.

William Sánchez, an immigration attorney for the Democracy Movement and some of the relatives of the repatriated Cuban migrants, sued the Departments of State and Homeland Security Tuesday in Miami federal court, alleging the migrants were ``improperly repatriated.''

Sánchez told The Miami Herald he wants a judge to define whether the bridge piling constitutes U.S. territory and if so order that the repatriated migrants be brought back by the U.S. government.

U.S. POLICY

Diaz-Balart said the three South Florida members were acting now because the Bush administration last month reconvened a Cabinet-level commission to revise overall U.S. policy on Cuba and issue a report by May.

''We stand together so that fairness and justice can prevail for freedom-seekers who come from a communist country that has no respect for fundamental human rights,'' Ros-Lehtinen said in a written statement. ``Due process and access to legal counsel are fundamental American values that should be afforded to Cuban refugees.''

It is not the first time that Cuban-American members of Congress asked to overhaul U.S.-Cuba migration policy, which ws changed by the Clinton administration in 1995 during a rafter crisis.

This request, written in a 2003 letter to the Secretary of State, was never granted.

Miami Herald staff writer Alfonso Chardy contributed to this report.