MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- Fifteen Cubans who fled their homeland and landed on an abandoned bridge piling in the Florida Keys were returned to Cuba late Monday morning, Coast Guard officials said.

The migrants' case drew attention after the U.S. Coast Guard decided that the piling they landed on did not constitute dry land.

A Cuban advocacy group angry over the U.S. Coast Guard's interpretation of the controversial "wet foot, dry foot" policy gathered off the McArthur Causeway to protest.

Movimiento Democracia asked that the 15 refugees who touched the old Seven Mile Bridge south of Marathon Key on Thursday be allowed to stay. Its leader, Ramon Saul Sanchez, has been on a hunger strike in front of the Coast Guard station since noon Saturday on behalf of the Cubans. As of 3 p.m., there was no word on whether Sanchez would end his hunger strike, since the Cubans have been repatriated.

Sanchez, along with about 35 others from the group, has made his cause visible to the public, displaying signs that read, "Hunger strike for freedom. Mr. President, respectfully, immigrants have rights too," and refusing food and water from those concerned by his actions.

The Coast Guard rescued the 15 Cubans from a piling holding up a section of the bridge Thursday. They rafted their way from Cuba late Monday or early Tuesday.

Under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay, while those intercepted at sea are generally repatriated.

But the part of the old bridge piling that the Cubans touched is no longer connected to land -- a gray area in the law that Sanchez and his supporters believe is unfair.

"The particular structure that they were found upon is not connected to land. The 'bridge' is kind of a misnomer," said Coast Guard Lt. Commander Chris O'Neil, spokesman for the department's Southeast region.

O'Neil said officials in Washington determined the Cubans should be considered "feet wet," because they were not able to walk to land from where they landed.

"We recognize that the old Key West bridge is part of the United States, as much as the Statue of Liberty, and (that the government should) allow the Cubans that were found there, as the law says, to remain in freedom in the United States," Sanchez said.

The Coast Guard said that the 15 Cubans were not subject to the "wet foot, dry foot" policy because the piling is not connected to land, but Sanchez points to the Statue of Liberty as a prime example. He believes if the Statue of Liberty is considered "dry foot" but is not connected to land -- although arguably the nation's most-symbolic monument rests on Liberty Island -- that the same rules should apply in this case.