Cuban Doctors to Enter U.S. as Refugees

Two Cuban doctors who were imprisoned in Zimbabwe last week after they tried to defect have been granted refugee status in the United States and are expected to arrive here as early as Monday, U.S. officials said Friday.

Officials said Leonel Cordova Rodriguez, 31, and Noris Pena Martinez, 25, were interviewed in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, Friday by an Immigration and Naturalization Service officer from the agency’s regional office in Nairobi. “We have given them temporary refugee status,” said an official in Washington.

Once they arrive in the United States, the doctors will be covered under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows any Cuban national here to apply for permanent residence.

The U.S. decision to admit the Cubans was an unexpected development at the end of a harrowing week in which the Zimbabwean government, allegedly acting with Cuban diplomats, attempted to secretly deport the two doctors back to Havana after they asked for political asylum.

Once their story became public this week, some members of Congress accused the State Department and INS of ignoring requests for U.S. asylum the doctors made before their disappearance.

U.S. officials denied that the two had been turned away. The INS said it had “gone by the book.”