Edwine Saint-Vil didn't hesitate for an instant when asked why she felt pleased at being held in a U.S. military camp, separated from her husband, penned in by rolls of razor-sharp concertina wire.
"If I stayed in Haiti I would get killed," she said.She and more than 1,000 other Haitian boat people picked up by U.S. Coast Guard cutters in recent weeks are being kept in the dusty, windswept confines of Camp Bulkeley, an abandoned training site at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
Conditions in the tent village are harsh, but dozens of boat people interviewed Wednesday said they felt safer and were thankful for regular meals and clean clothes.
Even on the cutters, bedraggled migrants said their cramped quarters under a broiling sun were a welcome improvement.
"I am happier here," said Michel Marie Rosette, 26, who was among 285 Haitians filling the flight deck of the cutter Legare at dockside in the Navy base.
Marine Corps Brig. Gen. George Walls Jr., who is running the Guantanamo Bay refugee operation, said the Haitians were being taken off cutters and two Navy ships as quickly as tents could be set up at the camp.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that it planned to make room for no more than 2,500 Haitian migrants at the temporary tent village, but on Wednesday Walls told visiting reporters he expected new orders to expand the operation.