A recent attempted attack on Cuba by 10 Cuban Americans from Florida brought several key issues related to the island to the forefront. While the families of those arrested or killed in an attack on Cuban border authorities verify what their motivations were, many on social media claimed they were simply going to “rescue” Cubans from the island, an idea that Secretary of State Marco Rubio clarified was illegal when asked about it by reporters.
What many of those people don’t know is that it is considered human smuggling under U.S. law for typically obvious reasons. While it may be common to Cuban Americans, who have all heard stories about people being hired to smuggle Cubans, typically family members from the island into the U.S., many often ignore the host of inherent problems that come from employing human smugglers. Particularly, when the families can’t meet the shifting demands of unscrupulous smugglers, who then often kidnap and hold Cubans for ransom.
Consequently, a 2024 case involving Cuban Americans smuggling Cubans from the island to the U.S. in “a violent human smuggling scheme that kidnapped and extorted Cuban migrants, holding them captive and threatening brutal harm to force payments from their families,” concluded last month The last of six people, Victor Rafael Arcia Albeja, 32, was convicted on February 20 for his involvement in a horrifying human smuggling scheme.
“This was an organized human smuggling enterprise enforced through kidnapping, torture, and terror,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “The defendants smuggled vulnerable Cuban migrants into our country and then treated them as commodities, imprisoning them, beating them with machetes, staging mock executions, and putting guns to their heads to extort ransom from their families. These are not immigration violations,” Quiñones continued. “They are violent federal crimes. If you exploit desperation for profit in South Florida, you will be hunted down, prosecuted federally, and face the full weight of the law.”
In a harrowing video shared by the Department of Justice (DOJ), a Cuban migrant can be seen standing on a chair with a noose around his neck in a mock execution, being beaten with a machete, and having a gun pointed at his head multiple times. In the Spanish-language video, you can hear the migrant beg not to be killed as his captors demand money.
According to the DOJ, Arcia Albeja and others transported Cubans by boat from Cayo Coco, Cuba, to Key Largo, Florida. They then transported them to a safe house in Miami Gardens, where captors demanded $15,000 in smuggling fees per person from the migrants’ families and friends. They used threats and violence to extort payments. For example, the captors showed the migrants a video before they boarded the boat in Cuba to suggest what would happen if they didn’t pay. The video showed a man beating a migrant with a machete, then killing them.
“The depravity of this kidnapping and smuggling operation is almost beyond description,” said Special Agent in Charge Brett Skiles of the Miami FBI. “Arcia Albeja and his co-defendants kidnapped, extorted, and tortured victims and their families by putting them in nightmarish circumstances such as a mock hanging, being beaten by a machete, and extorting large sums of money. Now all convicted, these defendants justly face significant prison sentences for their inhumane actions.”
According to the DOJ, on May 18, 2024, the men brought approximately 15 Cuban migrants to Key Largo. After some attempted to flee, members of the group chased them. The others were driven to a safe house where the group threatened the migrants with harm if payment was not made. When several families failed to pay, five were transported to a vacant farm property in northwest Miami-Dade County that was used for cockfighting.
At that location, the captors continued their efforts to collect smuggling fees by staging and recording acts of violence and sending the videos to the Cuban migrants’ families. One testified that she was put on a FaceTime call with her mother. During the call, the captors put a gun to her head and told her mother that if she did not pay, they would cut off her daughter’s head and mail it to her.
When securing the funds ultimately failed, the captors attempted to take the migrants to Louisiana for “forced labor to pay off the smuggling debts.” It was then that law enforcement stopped a vehicle on the Florida Turnpike in Sumter County. During that stop, they arrested one of the captors and freed the Cuban migrants. A jury ultimately convicted Arcia Albeja of “conspiracy to kidnap, four counts of kidnapping, conspiracy to bring an alien to the U.S., bringing an alien to the U.S., and four counts of violent crimes in furtherance of racketeering.”
Arcia Albeja faces life in prison on the kidnapping-related charges, 10 years in prison on each of the alien smuggling counts, and up to 20 years in prison on each count of violent crimes in furtherance of racketeering. A district court judge will determine his sentence after reviewing the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
Arcia Albeja’s co-defendants, Osmel Benitez, 40, of Opa-Locka; Victor Manuel Perez Cardenas, 40, of Tampa; Jhonny Walther Izaguirre Lopez, 46, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Yoelys Prada Ramos, 45, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Jose Angel Marrero Rodriguez, 52, of Houston, Texas, previously pleaded guilty.
There is a long history of human smuggling out of Cuba. While much of it revolves around trying to reunite families, many cases ended with capsized boats, people disappearing, and similar to the one mentioned here. For decades, solutions to ending this practice have revolved around lifting sanctions and changes in legislation, such as the Cuban Adjustment Act. The Act has often acted as an incentive to attempt the dangerous trek across the ocean. It provides Cubans a green card in as little as one year, a benefit afforded to very few, if any other immigrants.
Meanwhile, the idea of “rescuing” Cubans has been used by smugglers to attempt to escape human smuggling, drug smuggling, or other charges. Similarly, that was the narrative many tried to use to provide cover for the attack on Cuba. It didn’t take long for that narrative to disappear, thanks to the attackers’ families telling us what their plan was.
As families, friends, and much of the Florida Cuban American community try to portray those killed and captured as heroes, and like the laws based around smuggling Cubans from the island to the U.S., their actions are illegal for innumerable reasons. The most frightening part is never knowing how many Cubans might have been lost to human smugglers over six decades.
The Cubans in this story almost became 10 more.
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