Report: More than 115 Communist Cubans Have Moved to U.S. Since 2023

The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FHRC), a nongovernmental organization, has documented more than 115 cases of members of Cuba’s communist regime moving to the United States since February 2023.

The FHRC is a Cuban human rights organization that, among other projects and initiatives, maintains an extensive public list of Castro regime repressors. At press time, the list features more than 1,000 known repressors, including members of the Cuban Communist Party, state security and police officials, members of the Cuban government, prosecutors, and judges.

On Tuesday, FHRC Director Tony Costa warned at a press conference in Miami, Florida, that the number of Castro regime representatives entering the United States has “increased fivefold” since 2023.

“We have identified more than 1,000 repressors of the Cuban regime and more than 115 who have entered the country in the past year, many of them lying,” Costa said.

The number of repressors who have entered the United States, as documented by the FHRC, represents more than ten percent of the organization’s entire list of known repressors.

Cuba is presently undergoing its worst-ever migrant crisis, which has led to a collapse in its population — both the result of the Castro regime pushing Cuba to the brink of collapse through more than six decades of communist rule, featuring countless human rights abuses.

The collapse of Cuba as a result of communist mismanagement has forced 90 percent of the nation’s citizens to live in conditions of extreme poverty, in addition to other inhumane living conditions — such as constant blackouts and lack of proper access to water, health, medicine, food, and other supplies. Experts have estimated that Cuba lost 18 percent of its population to the migrant crisis between 2022 and 2023.

Rolando Cartaya, the FHRC member in charge of the repressor list, said that the organization began seeing an increase in the arrival of Castro regime repressors to the United States through the southern border following the start of the migrant crisis. Cartaya pointed out that the repressors also managed to enter the United States through other means, such as the Biden administration’s “humanitarian parole” program.

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Elixir Arando, a member of the Cuban diaspora, stated at the conference that two Cuban repressors who subjected him to an “act of repudiation” when he lived in Guantánamo are now living in the United States.

“It’s unheard of to know that these people who repressed us, who beat us, are living and enjoying freedom in this great country,” Arando said.

An “act of repudiation” is a mob attack that the Castro regime uses against its dissidents. It features swarming targets and their homes with a mob that chants insults and “revolutionary” slogans and, in some cases, throws garbage or other objects at them.

Cuban journalist Roberto Quiñones, jailed in the past for covering the trial proceedings of a religious couple who wanted to homeschool its children, said that the judge who denied his appeal now also lives in the United States.

The FHRC’s members were accompanied to the press conference by Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who pledged to identify and return Castro regime repressors now living in the United States to Cuba.

“If these people have been fighting so long for the regime, they should stay in Cuba,” Giménez said. “We don’t need them here.”

“If you are a Castro repressor living in the U.S., we will identify you, and you will be returned to Cuba for committing immigration fraud,” Giménez’s message read. “It is unacceptable that the Biden-Harris Administration would accommodate agents of the regime who murder our people.”

Giménez said at the press conference that the arrival of Castro regime repressors to the United States not only affects the Cuban community but also the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan communities.

“There are also people from the authoritarian regime of [Nicolás] Maduro who are ineligible to be here in the United States, and the same is happening with Nicaragua,” Giménez said. “If they were part of the oppression of those regimes, those people should not be entitled to have the freedoms that we enjoy here.”

“If they fought so hard for the Cuban, Venezuelan, or Nicaraguan regimes, let them stay in Cuba, Venezuela, or Nicaragua,” he continued.

The U.S. representative mentioned several cases of Cuban repressors who have recently arrived in the United States, such as Rosabel Roca Sampedro, a Castro regime prosecutor known to have sentenced at least four Cuban men to prison for protesting. Roca Sampedro reportedly requested asylum through the Biden administration’s CBP One smartphone application.

Giménez also mentioned the case of Manuel Menéndez Castellanos, a former member of the Cuban Communist Party and former henchman of Fidel Castro who arrived in the United States in August.

Despite the communist official’s decades-long public track record at the service of the Castro regime, Menéndez Castellanos received a form of U.S. migrant visa through a program of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) known as the “Cuban Family Reunification Parole” (CFRP) and now is believed to reside in Florida. 

Other known cases of Castro regime repressors recently arriving in the United States include Melody González Pedraza, a Cuban judge accused of issuing excessive prison sentences to peaceful dissidents. González Pedraza requested U.S. asylum in June after arriving in Tampa, Florida.

In May, Arelys Casañola Quintana, a former Castro regime local government official, entered the United States and is now reportedly believed to reside in Kentucky. Two nieces of Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz reportedly reside in Florida after one crossed the U.S. southern border and the other was accepted as a beneficiary of the “humanitarian parole” program.

Marrero Cruz’s son, Manuel Alejandro Marrero Medina, was reportedly accepted as a beneficiary of the “humanitarian parole” program but was ultimately denied the required flight permit to enter the United States.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.