This was the year of the systematic deportations of those same migrants who were loyal servants of the Havana regime.
14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2025 — If in 2024 Cubans saw hundreds of former regime officials settle in the United States , the quintessential enemy country, 2025 was the year of systematic deportations of those same migrants who were loyal servants of the Havana regime.
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January, the new administration, with Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, revoked the executive order issued by Joe Biden in the final hours of his presidency, removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Subsequently, the new administration reinstated Cuba’s Restricted List and also suspended the visa application process for officials of the Cuban regime .
The first high-profile deportation was, in February, that of influencer Cinthya Medrano, known as La Cintumbare, controversial for having praised President Miguel Díaz-Canel in some of her broadcasts and criticizing the mothers who protested for food in the midst of the crisis.
Back in March, former Cuban intelligence agent Tomás Emilio Hernández Cruz, 71, was arrested. He had rebuilt his life in West Park, Florida, and had lied on his residency application. The former official was held in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Broward County Detention Center until his deportation last Friday.
It was just after Cuban-American Congressman Carlos Giménez sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asking for an investigation and immediate deportation of more than 100 people with ties to the Castro regime and residence in the US, whose names he attached.
One of them was Daniel Morejón García, a repressor listed by the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, who was returned to the island in May. The former official, implicated in the repression of the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba, had been detained in April by ICE.
Also deported in September was Melody González Pedraza, the former Cuban judge known for her role in the trials of the July 11 protesters, after losing her asylum case. Before her, her husband, William Hernández Carrazana, and her brother, Ruber González Pedraza, were returned. All of them had entered the US in 2024 on humanitarian parole .
This is how Jorge Luis Vega García, known as Veguita , a former lieutenant colonel in the Ministry of the Interior, entered U.S. territory. He had been implicated for decades in acts of violence in Cuban prisons. Arrested in August, he was deported on November 6 .
The same fate awaits other former regime officials, such as Yuniel Báez Pedrera, who was once the leader of the Union of Young Communists in Havana and later became a businessman in Florida. He was arrested in late November upon his arrival in Miami from a trip to the island.
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