World

Downed Cubans Not Hijackers

September 19, 2000 / 12:13 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Immigration officials cleared the way Thursday for all nine Cubans who survived a plane crash at sea to stay in the United States and seek residency.

Six of the survivors were released from the Krome Detention Center and taken to a clinic for a medical checkup. They then were released to family members in Miami, attorney Roberto Villasante said.

All were paroled to the United States, allowing them to apply for residency, said Patricia Mancha, spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). That process can begin next September.

Parole also was expected for the remaining survivors, 6-year-old Andy Fuentes and his parents. Andy's American relatives took the boy to Kmart on Thursday, helping him get some much-needed shoes as well as inline skates, basketball, football, baseball bat and helmet and blue socks.

"I had a pair of skates in Cuba," the boy told his Cuban-American grandfather and uncle in Spanish. "They were made of plastic, and they were garbage."

Destination Unclear

Click on these links to read more on the Cuban plane crash and what will happen to its survivors:

CBS News Correspondent Bobbi Harley reports on what federal immigration law says about the fate of the nine left alive.

After a long silence, the Cuban government reacts, saying the plane was stolen but the pilot pretended it was hijacked.

His parents — Rodolfo Fuentes and Liliana Ponzoa, both 36 — remained in a Key West hospital but were expected to be released Friday.

The family and seven others left Cuba on Tuesday, taking off from a rural airfield in a Soviet-built crop-duster. Low on fuel, the plane was ditched into the Gulf of Mexico between Cuba and Mexico, killing one of the men aboard. The others were rescued by a nearby cargo ship.

"The escape ... was planned way before," said Fuentes' brother, Rafael, who said he talked to Rodolfo in the hospital. "The bad part is that the pilot got lost ... The pilot realized he was running out of fuel so he stopped looking for land and started looking for a boat."

One badly injured survivor was brought ashore by the U.S. Coast Guard Tuesday and the rest were allowed in for medical checks.

The survivors were taken to Key West and Miami, where they were interviewed by U.S. immigration officials to determine if they are eligible to stay in the United States.

President Fidel Castro's government had called for the group to be repatriated, while in an echo of the tug-of-war earlier this year over child shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez, Cuban exiles demanded that they be allowed to stay.

U.S. immigration policy dictates that Cubans intercepted at sea must be returned to Cuba or sent to a third country.

The Cuban Adjustment Act allows Cubans who reach American soil to apply for U.S. residency, while most Cubans picked up at sea are repatriated.

Complicating the fate of the crash survivors were the circumstances of the flight. In the past, federal authorities have returned hijackers to Cuba for prosecution or has put them on trial but the FBI said Thursday that this week's flight was not a hijacking.

The Cuban government called the theft of a state-owned plane an act of piracy. It said the topic was raised during migration talks between the two countries Thursday in New York but remained unresolved.

In response, Cubans will gather for a national protest similar to those held frequently during the national campaign to repatriate 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, a moderator on an evening public affairs program said Wednesday.

Those released from the detention center in Miami were the pilot, Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, his wife, Mercedes Martinez, 34, their sons Erik, 13, and Danny, 7, and Pavel Puig and Jacquelin Viera, both 28.

Puig's brother Yudel Puig Martinez, 23, died in the crash.