Several Cuban exiles accuse him of beatings and torture against common and political prisoners.
14ymedio, Havana, 5 August 2025 — The former Interior Ministry (Minint) lieutenant colonel Jorge Luis Vega García, known as Veguita, was arrested Tuesday in the United States, as confirmed to to Martí Noticias by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Several political prisoners identified the migrant as a repressor who beat and tortured inmates.
Vega García legally entered the country on January 20, 2024, through Tampa International Airport in Florida, with his wife and son, under the Humanitarian Parole Program. He was later eligible for the Cuban Adjustment Act, despite his history as one of the “most feared repressors” in the Cuban prison system, a connection that went undetected during his immigration process.
In Cuba, he directed the Agüica and Canaleta prisons in Matanzas, and is accused by former political prisoners such as Benito Ortega Suárez, Pablo Pacheco Ávila, Blas Giraldo Reyes, and Fidel Suárez Cruz of orchestrating physical and psychological torture, beatings, prolonged confinement, and reprisals against imprisoned opponents during the Black Spring of 2003.
“Veguita is one of Cuba’s many murderers,” Fidel Suárez told journalist Mario J. Pentón. Suárez claims that, along with other officials, Vega beat him 19 times in a month, leaving him with permanent scars. Pacheco, convicted during the Black Spring of 2003, remembers him as a man with a “short, Nazi-style haircut” whose “evil you could see in his face.”
Cuban-American Congressman Carlos Giménez formally requested his deportation.
The arrest comes after Cuban-American Congressman Carlos Giménez formally requested his deportation in a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, in which he included documentary evidence of his involvement in the repressive apparatus. The signatures on several documents signed by Vega in Cuba in 2010 and in the United States in 2024 confirmed his identity.
Vega denied to Martí Noticias that he had ever been a member of the Cuban prison system and ended a call during which he was confronted. “If you defended communism so much, what are you doing here, in the country you criticized so much?” Pacheco questioned.
So far, ICE has not announced the specific charges against Vega García.
Vega García’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 (FDHC) list of repressors, was also arrested and subsequently deported to the island last May. More than 100 names appear on a list submitted by Giménez to the Department of Homeland Security, including alleged repressors residing in the US.
To date, ICE has not announced any specific charges against Vega García. Exile organizations and victims are demanding a formal investigation and a trial to hold him accountable for the alleged crimes.
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