He entered Florida on parole in January 2024 and was reported after beginning the process to qualify for the Adjustment Act.
14ymedio, Madrid 29 August 2025 — Former Interior Ministry Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Luis Vega García, known as Veguita, was arrested on August 5 in the United States by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after being identified by some of his victims on the island as a cruel repressor. He now has a deportation order to Cuba. The decision was signed by a Miami immigration judge last Monday, although it grants an appeal period until September 24.
If he loses, he will be returned to Havana, which can accept or reject the deportation. In similar situations, Martí Noticias points out, the US usually opts for returns to Mexico or other countries willing to receive former Cuban officials.
Vega García legally entered the United States on January 20, 2024, through Tampa International Airport in Florida, along with his wife and son, under the Humanitarian Parole Program. He was later eligible for the Cuban Adjustment Act, and during that process, his involvement in the island’s criminal justice system was not detected.
At the end of July, several former political prisoners, including Benito Ortega Suárez, Pablo Pacheco Ávila, Blas Giraldo Reyes, and Fidel Suárez Cruz, identified him as “one of the regime’s most feared repressors,” responsible for orchestrating physical and psychological torture against opponents in the Agüica and Canaleta prisons in Matanzas.
At the end of July, several former political prisoners described him as “one of the regime’s most feared repressors.”
“Veguita is one of the many murderers Cuba has,” Fidel Suárez told journalist Mario J. Pentón. Suárez claimed that, along with other officials, Vega beat him 19 times in a single month, leaving him with permanent scars. Pablo Pacheco, convicted during the Black Spring of 2003, remembered him as a man with a “short, Nazi-style haircut” whose “evil you could see in his face.”
The deportation order comes less than a month after the arrest, revealing the Trump administration’s willingness to expedite these types of cases. Cuban-American Congressman Carlos Giménez formally requested his deportation at the time, in a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, in which he included documentary evidence of his involvement in the repressive apparatus. The matching signatures on several documents signed by Vega in Cuba in 2010 and in the United States in 2024 confirmed his identity.
Vega’s case adds to other recent ones, such as that of Jorge Javier Rodríguez Cabrera, also linked to the Cuban regime and detained by ICE in recent months. Daniel Morejón García, who appears on the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba’s list of repressors, was also arrested and subsequently deported to the island in May.
Another case is that of former Cuban judge Melody González Pedraza, known for her role in the trials against protesters from the Island-wide protests of 11 July 2021 (’11J’), and detained upon arrival in the US despite having been accepted under the Humanitarian Parole Program. After being rejected, the former official requested political asylum, alleging pressure from the regime to issue certain sentences, but her request was dismissed, and she received a deportation order in May.
She was expected to arrive on the island on the U.S. return flight this Thursday, but her name continues to appear in the records of the Richwood immigration center in Louisiana, where she remains detained by ICE.
More than 100 names appear on a list submitted by Giménez to the Department of Homeland Security, including alleged repressors residing in the United States.
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
