''They are being confined like caged animals,'' she said. ``They want to be released.''

But no one knows when.

In October, guards say, the men celebrated like kids upon learning that U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered them brought to his court in Washington, D.C., a move that edged them closer to U.S. asylum. They ran around the compound, their arms outstretched in imitation of the planes they can see come and go from Guantánamo.

The 1,000 or so Uighur-American community near Washington, D.C. teamed up with the Lutheran Refugee Service to offer to sponsor the men. Religious groups in Tallahassee also volunteered to resettle three of them.

Instead, an order came from Washington to detain them as a population apart as though they are no longer enemy combatants. With the courts still studying detainee files and more release orders expected, Camp Iguana could be a model for a coming, more liberal phase of Guantánamo detainees.

But absent a diplomatic breakthrough or change of heart by the incoming Obama administration, says former U.S. State Department lawyer Vijay Padmanabhan, Camp Iguana could emerge as a symbol contrary to the one of closure the new government is courting.

''Building new structures and expanding the camp there cuts in the face of the image that the United States is trying to cultivate,'' he said.

Until recently, Padmanabhan's job was to seek third nation resettlement for the Uighurs and others on behalf of the Bush administration. He discovered ``nobody wanted to displease the Chinese government.''

Now he is a professor at Yeshiva University and urges the new administration to ''think hard'' about bringing the Uighurs to America, to encourage other nations to take in some detainees, too.

''People want Guantánamo closed, but they don't want Guantánamo detainees in their backyard,'' he said.

Camp Iguana is not waiting to see what becomes of the latest chapter of Guantánamo at the crossroads.

HERE TO STAY?

Prison camp contractors are adding a 40-by-60-foot soccer yard. And the Uighurs have a little garden. They planted orange seeds and have inch-high seedlings they are cultivating.

Says Navy Rear Adm. David Thomas, the prison camps commander: ``What that says about their thoughts on long-term detention, I leave it up to you.''