Cuban actors seek asylum in U.S.

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MIAMI, April 30 (UPI) -- Two Cuban actors who disappeared en route to New York's Tribeca Film Festival say they are seeking political asylum in the United States.

The whereabouts of Javier Nunez Florian and Anailin de la Rua, both 20, were unknown for a week after they flew from Cuba to Miami, but many suspected they had defected during a layover in the Florida city. They had been expected to continue on to New York where their movie "Una Noche" was screened to great acclaim, but they never arrived.

In an interview that aired during the weekend, they told the Spanish-language TV channel America TeVe in Miami they want to pursue careers in the United States.

"What I most want is to continue acting. It's what I like most, but if I can't attain that dream I would work at something else, because what I want is to fight," Fox News quoted Nunez as saying.

De la Rua said she feels she is a part of the generation of young Cubans desperately seeking to leave the communist country.

"Thank God, I came to this country by plane and not by sea," she said, referring to how the characters in her film travel by raft in an attempt to start new lives in the United States.

Fox News said Nunez and De la Rua met while making the movie and are now a couple.

Their lawyer, Willy Allen, said he is in the process of preparing papers to request asylum on their behalf.

"I think that next week we'll present them and we'll be able to have a response relatively quickly," Allen said in the America TeVe interview, which aired Friday night.