MIAMI.- The Cuban pilot Rubén Martínez Machado was in court this Thursday and a judge granted him political asylum.
Martinez arrived in South Florida in a Russian fumigation plane he worked with on October 21, 2022. The pilot had an uncertain future since he escaped the island and remains in a detention center for immigrants.
His lawyer, Eduardo Soto, appealed a previous court ruling after a judge denied him bail.
Soto then said that the prosecutor’s office had requested that he remain detained due to the theft of the plane in which Martínez Machado arrived, which should be treated as a crime.
The lawyer explained that Martínez had stated that his intention was never to steal the plane, but to use it as a means of escaping the Cuban regime.
The 29-year-old Cuban pilot arrived in the United States on a Russian plane belonging to the Cuban regime and has been awaiting supervised release ever since.
Martínez, detained by ICE at the Broward Transitional Center, arrived in Miami from Cuba on October 21.
Martinez arrived in a single-engine Antonov An-2 plane, which landed at Dade-Collier Transition and Training Airport, about 30 miles west of Krome.
One of the possibilities I was waiting for