14ymedio, Havana, December 8, 2023 — The theory is clear: the official guide of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, published in 2020, clarifies that it is inconceivable that members of a Communist Party – and Cuba has more than half a million of them – pronounce the U.S. Oath of Loyalty. The practice, however, is very different: not a few agents of the Havana regime have been admitted within the U.S. border, a country in which they live, work and vote.
This is the case of Misael Enamorado Dager, who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba between 2001 and 2009, and who now resides in Houston, Texas, after entering the country with humanitarian parole, according to the influencer Niover Licea on social networks.
Interviewed by 14ymedio, a source close to the former leader confirms that he recently managed to move to the United States. “It’s been several years since he left the Party and was in a state research center until he retired, as did Lourdes, his wife,” he explains.
“They are there with their son, who had already been gone for a long time,” and he was the one who allegedly started the parole procedures, he adds.
Enamorado’s record on the Island leaves no doubt about his political affiliation. In 2011, during the VI Party Congress and two years after leaving office in Santiago, the former official was promoted to Secretary of the Communist Party, along with figures such as Esteban Lazo and José Ramón Machado Ventura.
However, in 2013 his political career plummeted. That year, during the restructuring carried out by Raúl Castro, Enamorado was “released from his status as a member of the Central Committee.”
Since then, his appearances in the public sphere decreased, until he fell into an oblivion that, as his exile suggests, he used to bypass Washington’s ideological controls.
During the restructuring carried out by Raúl Castro, Enamorado was “released from his status as a member of the Central Committee”
It was also reported this week by the independent press that Yurquis Companioni, a counterintelligence agent in Sancti Spíritus, managed to enter the United States through the southern border – after traveling the route from Nicaragua to Mexico – thanks to his sister, who already resided in that country and sponsored him for a six-year parole.
A source of this newspaper in that province confirmed Companioni’s identity and his relationship with State Security. “He seemed like a cool person, but he would sink you in a short time if you if you didn’t suit him. I haven’t seen him in a long time, so I’m not surprised that he’s in the United States,” he said.
According to the source, the former agent worked supervising the recruits in various facilities in the province. “Once he caught me asleep on duty and sent me to detention for 15 days,” he adds.
This type of story is common, he continues. “One day they’re here, taking any bribe that comes their way, and then they leave and appear in all the photos with American flags as if nothing had happened,” he says.
In fact, the cases of Enamorado and Companioni are not even remotely the only ones. A wave of former defenders, repressors and bureaucrats of the regime has arrived in the U.S. in recent years. Complaints on social networks every time any of these cases come to light revolve around the same idea: counterintelligence agents, sent or not by the regime, “have invaded” the Cuban community in exile.
The emigrants, increasingly concerned that the freedom they have achieved with effort could be transformed into a murky reality, firmly demand that the United States thoroughly review the background of those who enter the country.
An update of the inadmissibility policies of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service in 2020, during Donald Trump’s term made it clear – at least in writing – what had been done for decades with migrants: “Unless exempt otherwise, any possible immigrant who is or has been a member or affiliate of the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party (subdivision or affiliated with them), domestic or abroad, is inadmissible to the United States.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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