Freed in N.Y., 15 Cubans Now Held in Texas

Fifteen Cuban convicts freed from New York jails boarded a special plane today and flew to indefinite detention with a growing number of their countrymen in Texas.

Federal authorities are detaining the Cubans released from state prisons in the Laredo, Tex., maximum-security jail because they are too dangerous to set free and because Cuba will not accept them, officials said.

The prisoners were flown in shackles from Niagara Falls Air Force Reserve Base, the officials said. They will join 124 Cubans sent to the Webb County Law Enforcement Center in the last three weeks from various states, according to New York and Texas officials.

With their state releases, they have met their sentencing obligations in New York but are placed in the custody of federal immigration authorities. Though they are no longer charged with crimes, they are being detained because they are in the country illegally, the officials said.

‘Incredibly Inhumane Act’

Most of the Cubans were among 129,000 who came in the “Freedom Flotilla” to the United States in 1980. Cuban President Fidel Castro said afterward that the group included the undesirables from his country’s jails and hospitals.

“We dislike this very much,” said Benedict J. Ferro, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service chief for New York and Vermont. “It is an incredibly inhumane act for Cuba not to take them back, and that leaves us no choice but to detain them.”

The 15 served sentences on convictions for rape, kidnaping, drug sales and armed robbery.

The INS contracted with Webb County to fill 200 of the jail’s 450 beds with Cuban prisoners in federal custody, Ferro said. Three other facilities handle criminals from the boatlift. The others are in Atlanta; Oakdale, Tenn., and Washington.