(The Center Square) – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Florida continue to arrest illegal foreign nationals in the state. Recent arrests include a Cuban intelligence officer and foreign nationals who’d been previously deported multiple times.
In one case, ICE-Miami agents working with FBI agents arrested a Cuban national who gained Legal Permanent Resident status after allegedly making fraudulent claims on his immigration application.
Tomas Emilio Hernandez Cruz, 71, was arrested at his residence in West Park after a multiagency investigation began in September 2023. Investigators discovered that Hernandez Cruz “was a member of Cuban intelligence at various high-level posts overseas” and “knowingly and willfully withheld his true position and profession within the Cuban Communist Party to deliberately deceive U.S. authorities when he applied for and obtained his LPR status,” ICE said. He was arrested, processed and remains in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-FL, and others in the Florida congressional delegation have warned for years about high-ranking Cuban officials not being properly vetted before or after arrive in the U.S. “Nearly 115 Castro regime agents are already living in the United States,” Gimenez warned last year, including “high-ranking Communist Party officials, judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement,” The Center Square reported.
His and others’ warnings came after a former Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council and as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia pleaded guilty to secretly acting for decades as an agent of the Cuban regime and after Gimenez and others raised the alarm about Chinese spies operating in Cuba.
Former U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, raised concerns last year about the Biden administration inviting Cuban foreign agents to tour high-level government facilities, arguing they posed a national security threat, an issue he is addressing as the new Secretary of State.
In another case, ICE-Jacksonville agents arrested a Honduran national illegally in the U.S. charged with possessing a counterfeit permanent resident card after illegally reentering the U.S. after previously being deported in 2013. He faces 12 years in prison if convicted.
In another case, ICE-Miami agents arrested a Dominican national who was previously removed from the U.S. three times since 2010. He was most recently arrested in Puerto Rico last year on human smuggling charges that led to the death of three minors. This month, he was removed and handed over to Dominican authorities.
In other cases, ICE agents arrested and remove Mexican nationals illegally in the U.S., one was arrested in Collier County after being previously removed from the U.S. four times with two prior convictions and having previously served federal prison time; another Mexican national was arrested by ICE-Jacksonville agents after having been previously removed from the country six times. In other cases, ICE-Jacksonville agents arrested illegal foreign nationals in Duval County from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico who were all previously deported and reentered as gotaways.
More than two million gotaways, those who illegally entered between ports of entry and evaded capture, were reported illegally entering the U.S. under the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported. They were among a record more than 14 million illegal border crossers reported under the Biden administration, including nearly 2,000 on the federal terrorist watchlist and hundreds of thousands of criminals, The Center Square reported.
