Vega García, also referred to as Veguita (“Lil’ Vega”) is a former lieutenant colonel of the Cuban Interior Ministry (MININT) who reportedly entered the United States in 2024 thanks to the Biden administration’s “humanitarian parole” program. Sources close to the case confirmed to Martí Noticias that the Cuban official was deported on November 6 and, according to ICE’s public records, does not appear as “detained” in any of the agency’s facilities.
Several former political prisoners of Cuba’s communist Castro regime told Martí Noticias in July that Vega García was present in the United States and described him as one of the regime’s most feared prison torturers, accusing him of orchestrating and overseeing numerous instances of physical and psychological torture, beatings, and inflicting other forms of inhumane treatment against Cubans during 2003’s “Black Spring” dissident crackdown wave. He was also accused of using common prisoners to harass incarcerated dissidents.
In spite of his widely known ties to the Cuba communist regime, Vega García reportedly became a “beneficiary” of the United States’ “humanitarian parole,” a now-defunct program implemented by the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2023 that allowed up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to enter the United States and “legally” stay and work for a period of “up to years” by means of a sponsor.
Martí Noticias detailed in July that Vega García arrived at the Tampa International Airport in Florida on January 20, 2024, thanks to the parole program and, at a later point, he filed a U.S. legal resident status request under the 1996 Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA), a legislation that was specifically passed to benefit Cubans fleeing from the communist regime’s brutal persecution.
The Foundation For Human Rights in Cuba (FHRC), a non-government organization, included Vega García in its list of known Cuban repressors, accusing him of committing abuse and beatings, first during his tenure as head of the maxim security prison in Agüica, Colon, and then as chief of the “Las Canaletas” prison in Perico, Matanzas.
“Veguita was feared in Agüica. He had a reputation for being sadistic, for enjoying other people’s pain. For many, he represents the worst of the Cuban prison system,” a former political prisoner living in Miami told Martí Noticias.
ICE reportedly detained the Cuban official in early August. Martí Noticias explained in its Thursday report that a Miami immigration judge ordered his immediate deportation, which finally took place three months later.
“It’s a partial victory. At least it has been officially recognized that a man with that track record cannot remain in the United States enjoying the freedom he denied to so many,” Cuban researcher Luis Domínguez, who was instrumental in finding Vega García in the U.S., told Martí Noticias.
“The former lieutenant colonel was not identified as a repressor upon entering the United States due to the limitations of the humanitarian parole program, which allowed — according to an official statement — the entry of ‘more than half a million poorly vetted foreigners,’” Martí Noticias’s report read.
Martí Noticias explained in July that it had obtained and reviewed two documents allegedly signed by Vega García pertaining to the release of Cuban political prisoner Benito Ortega Suárez and another allegedly signed by the Cuban official while he was in the United States in 2024. The outlet reported that the signatures in both documents were almost identical.”
In August, independent Cuban journalist and former political prisoner Pablo Pacheco Ávila recounted to Martí Noticias the case of a young Cuban man who, upon learning that he would be beaten by Vega García, threw himself down the stairs from a third floor in the Agüica prison before facing the beating, and stressed, “there are faces that are tattooed on your soul. Veguita is one of them.”
“Veguita was the second-in-command at the prison. They kept us in isolation, without seeing the sun for months. They took the political prisoners out for visits once every three months. That was pure torture,” Pacheco Ávila said at the time.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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