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The United States government filed a civil lawsuit to revoke the U.S. citizenship of former ambassador Víctor Manuel Rocha, who has been accused and convicted of acting for decades as an undercover agent of the Cuban regime while holding high-level diplomatic positions in Washington and Latin America.
The legal action was filed in the Federal Court for the Southern District of Florida and argues that Rocha illegally obtained his naturalization in 1978 by concealing that he had been working for Cuban intelligence since 1973 and maintained ties with the Communist Party of Cuba.
According to the court document, Rocha lied throughout the immigration process by swearing that he had not committed any crimes, that he had no communist affiliations, and that he believed in the Constitution and the system of government of the United States.
“None of these were true” (“None of this was true”), states the lawsuit from the Department of Justice.
Rocha, born in Colombia and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in September 1978, had a long career within the Department of State.
Between 1981 and 2002, he held sensitive diplomatic positions in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Argentina, and Bolivia, in addition to serving on the National Security Council and in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
U.S. authorities claim that he used those positions to clandestinely support the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) and
The case against Rocha came to light publicly in December 2023 when he was arrested in Miami on charges of conspiring to act as an illegal agent of a foreign government and defraud the United States.
In April 2024, he pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement with the federal prosecutor's office. During the process, he admitted to having secretly supported the Cuban regime since 1973 and that he deliberately concealed his status as an agent.
During the sentencing hearing, federal judge Beth Bloom stated that Rocha “betrayed the United States for 51 years” and described his citizenship as “a privilege obtained unlawfully.”
The former diplomat was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $500,000. He is currently serving his sentence at the federal prison FCI Coleman in Florida.
The new lawsuit for denationalization argues that Rocha never met the legal requirements to become a U.S. citizen because of:
his lack of "good moral character";
its ties to communism;
the perjury committed during the migration process;
and their lack of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.
The government also argues that had it been aware of Rocha's true connection with Cuba, immigration authorities would never have approved his citizenship application.
In addition to revoking his naturalization, Washington is requesting the permanent cancellation of his citizenship certificate, forcing him to surrender any U.S. documents—including passports—and prohibiting him from claiming benefits associated with the citizenship obtained in 1978.
The case is considered one of the most serious instances of Cuban infiltration detected within the diplomacy and national security apparatus of the United States.
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