This Friday morning, Cuban pilot Rubén Martínez Machado left the Broward detention center where he was being held, allegedly arriving in South Florida aboard a Russian plane stolen from the Cuban regime.
“It was worth it,” Martínez said when questioned by Telemundo 51 cameras as he left the scene. At the same time he added: “thank you very much to everyone who supported me,” he said, also including his family in Cuba.
“I have nothing to say to the regime. I just want to thank everyone who helped me to be here,” he said to one of the first questions he was asked.
“It was about three hours, I was very scared, concentrating on whether there was someone following me,” said the pilot of those hours of flight.
Martínez said he plans to move to Houston, Texas. And that in his plans for the future “you have to find a job… in the future, I would like to be a pilot, but I can start doing anything”.
After appearing in court on Thursday, a foreigners’ judge accepted his request for political asylum under the guise of credible fear that his lawyer Eduardo Soto had been asking for several months.
“We won! They granted my client asylum and there was no appeal reservation, so the pilot stays here,” lawyer Soto said excitedly, after learning that Martínez would be released.
During the final hearing which lasted at least four hours, the lawyer said that as the hours passed he noticed that the case was going to be in his favor, so at the end he thanked the prosecutor for the attitude she had of not making objections. .
The pilot, who had an uncertain future since he escaped from the island, remained in a detention center for migrants. His lawyer Eduardo Soto had appealed a previous court decision after a judge denied him bail.
Soto then said that the prosecution had asked that he remain detained because of the theft of the plane he arrived in, which should be treated as a crime.
The lawyer alleged that Martínez’s intention was never to steal the plane, but to use it as a means of escaping the Cuban regime.
On October 21, 2022, the 29-year-old Cuban pilot arrived in South Florida in a Russian fumigation plane belonging to the Cuban regime that he was using to work on the island.
Martínez Machado’s daring journey began when he took off from the Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus and landed with the old plane at a small airport in Dade-Collier.
“I first went straight into international waters, then straight here and then along the west coast to avoid the population,” the Cuban pilot reportedly commented in statements offered days after arriving in the United States.
After this important step and after his first year in the United States, Martínez Machado will be able to apply for permanent residency.