Jorge Torres, who used a wobbly raft made of three inner tubes to float from Cuba to Florida this week, says it's better to "die in the ocean than live with Fidel."
Torres, 29, a sheet metal worker, says he fled Cojimar, Cuba, last Sunday when Fidel Castro's troops began a house-to-house search on his street.
Sharks circled the makeshift craft he shared with his best friend during the terrifying 90-mile crossing. It was, he said Thursday, worth it.
"The young are dying to get out, and they are just throwing themselves in the ocean," said Torres. "Thousands and thousands more will come."
That's what worries Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, who's bracing for an economically devastating replay of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when 125,000 people fled Cuba for Florida.
The potential exodus also is another foreign policy dilemma for the Clinton administration, which today is expected to announce policy changes to deal with refugee wave.
The Coast Guard has rescued more than 1,600 Cuban refugees from the Straits of Florida in the past week. The guard picked up 547 Cubans Wednesday, the biggest single day since the 1980 exodus, and 527 by Thursday evening.
The exodus has grown since Aug. 5, when Castro threatened to open Cuba's ports after the worst rioting since he took power in 1959.
Cuban refugees in orange life vests sat on the deck of a docked Coast Guard boat in Key West as Chiles warned the influx "is fast becoming a tidal storm of immigration."
Chiles activated the state's emergency immigration plan, ordering National Guard units to prepare a temporary holding area, probably at Homestead Air Force Base. He also appealed for federal help, including $75 million and deployment of Navy ships to intercept Cubans before they reach U.S. waters.
But Attorney General Janet Reno set a low-key response on Thursday, saying the administration is managing the problem "in an orderly way and without disruption." By today, she says, a total of 86 immigration agents will be working on Cuban refugee cases.
Reno also noted that 90% of Cuban refugees have settled with relatives in the United States - 75% in Florida, and 15% in New York and New Jersey. The other 10%, she said, are being placed outside of Florida.
Today, Clinton is expected to announce that Cubans will be detained - much like Haitians - before they can be admitted to the USA. This would end the almost-automatic asylum Cubans have enjoyed because they are refugees from communism. Most Haitians, in contrast, have been sent back.
"Haitians have been treated extremely unfairly. They should be treated as political refugees," says Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla.
Clinton knows well the political perils Cuban refugees can create. His 1980 re-election loss as Arkansas governor was due in part to rioting of Cuban refugees at Arkansas' Fort Chaffee.
For all the political pressure caused by the Cuban refugee problem - Chiles is in a tough re-election campaign - the real crisis remains a human one.
Cuban exile groups say only one in four refugees actually makes it to Florida. Tales from the survivors are harrowing.
Among those who made it was 91-year-old Alejandra Castillo, who endured five days of seasickness and merciless sun.
"I decided to come because my son was leaving. If they were going to die I was going to die with them, but I wasn't going to be left behind," she says.
At least five other rafters, including three children, were hospitalized. Among them was Daniel Bussott-Prieto, 8, whose parents drowned at sea. Daniel's mother sacrificed her life for her son's, strapping the only life vest around him.
The influx is alarming for Chiles and other Florida officials because it could cost them millions. Miami area schools are already overcrowded; taxes have been raised to the legal limit.
Even south Florida's thriving Cuban exile community doesn't want another Mariel.
"The Cubans here should not play Fidel Castro's game, to go into the island to take their relatives out," says Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, a volunteer pilots' group that helps spot rafters in the Straits of Florida.
But the rafters who make it to Florida are warmly received by Dade County's Cuban community, one-half million strong. Survivors of the crossing tell their tales on Spanish-language radio. Refugee centers' Cuban-American volunteers clap and cheer at the arrival of each scruffily clad, sunburned group:
"People associate these rafters with the erosion of Castro's government," says Florida International University professor Antonio Jorge. "The implication is that Fidel's government is coming to an end, so that puts a positive light on it."
Still, volunteers and government officials are overwhelmed. Crowd control barriers have been erected in Miami at the church agencies that help resettle refugees.
At Key West's Transit Home for Cuban Refugees - entry point for the majority of rafters - director Arturo Cobo has issued a desperate call for volunteers and supplies. The center offers a shower, a hot meal, and a change of clothes.
"The situation in Cuba is explosive," says Cobo. "The Cuban people cannot subsist anymore. No electricity. No water. No food. No medicine. And most important, no freedom. "
The Transit Home keeps an outdoor exhibit of rafts: Inner tubes tied together with canvas, a wooden door lashed atop metal barrels.
"We know what they're going through," says volunteer Mirta Gonzalez, 28, who fled Cuba with her family as a youngster.
Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., says Clinton should step up U.S. broadcasts to the island, showing Cubans the dangers of fleeing by boat and encouraging dissent against Castro.
"Direct communication will reduce the number (of refugees) and Castro also will have to stem the flow because he can't afford to open a window on the world to the people on the island," says Menendez.
Jeb Bush, son of the former president and the leading GOP candidate to challenge Chiles, says Clinton should "tighten the screws" on Castro by restricting travel to the island by Cuban-Americans and by forbidding Cuban-Americans from sending home dollars to their families.
Chiles implored Cubans Thursday, "Please do not risk your lives on a very dangerous journey. The Castro government is clearly weakening, and the day of freedom is near."
But Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., warns the refugee crisis will continue "until the Castro government falls. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better."
Contributing: Deborah Sharp in Miami and Maria Puente
