They landed on a bridge in the Florida Keys just as their leaky vessel began to sink, then called relatives and settled down to await collection.

But the Department of Homeland Security sent them back to face the wrath of Fidel Castro’s Communist regime — an act that has outraged the 600-000-strong Cuban exile community in Florida.

Under US laws, fleeing Cubans who manage to reach dry land are allowed to stay in the country, while those intercepted at sea must return to their homeland.

But the department, which acknowledged the incident yesterday, ruled that the bridge did not qualify as terra firma because it was broken.

The incident has prompted a new row over the controversial “wet-foot dry-foot” policy. Because the group scrambled on to a stretch of the old Seven-Mile Bridge that had crumbled into the sea — meaning that they could not walk to shore — they still counted as having “wet feet”, officials argued. Had they reached one of the intact sections, or the new Seven-Mile Bridge a few yards farther on, things would have been different, the authorities said.

Cuban-American leaders accused officials of splitting hairs, pointing to a clause in Coast Guard policy which clearly states that Cubans who “touch US soil, bridges, piers or rocks” qualify for legal status to stay.

“Because they reached an old bridge and not a new bridge, there’s a judgment they didn’t reach American soil?” complained Senator Mel Martinez, of Florida, who was born in Cuba and moved to the US under a humanitarian programme in the 1960s.

“The semantics used to return these men and women — who have risked so much to reach freedom and are now returned to an uncertain future — are an embarrassment.”

Lawyers for Miami-based relatives of the group, which included boys aged 2 and 13, say that they will be punished by Cuban authorities for escaping. Their lawyers plan a legal challenge, arguing that the 15 should be taken back to America.

Cuban exiles have demonstrated in Miami and Ramon Saul Sanchez, an anti-Castro activist, has threatened to starve himself to death unless the decision is reversed.

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