The Cuban scientist and activist Oscar Casanella denounced in an interview with Tania Costa for CiberCuba that at least two of the repressors who participated in his political expulsion from Cuban institutions in 2015-2016 obtained legal residency in the United States, despite having been reported with complete documentation since then.
"My political oppressors have residency here in the United States or at least they were allowed to enter legally, being reported since 2015-2016 with all the evidence," stated Casanella, who is currently in a migratory limbo awaiting the resolution from her immigration judge.
The activist explained that after being expelled for political reasons from the National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology and the University of Havana—where he served as a professor for ten years without receiving a salary—he sent files with scanned documents, signatures, photos, and videos to the site of Cuban repressors. Despite this, at least two of those individuals entered the country legally.
His statements come in the context of the arrest of Adys Lastres Morera, sister of the executive president of GAESA, who was detained in Miami by ICE agents on May 21 following the revocation of her residency by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Casanella believed that the case of Lastres Morera is not coincidental: "The profile of the sister of the GAESA director is very suspicious. It is highly suspicious, and knowing how serious Marco Rubio is when he speaks, Marco Rubio has stated that she lived in the United States and maintained a collaboration with the Cuban regime. I don't think that is a coincidence."
The activist argued that Rubio's action should mark the beginning of a broader policy: "Both the oppressors and the families of the oppressors need to be in the spotlight. And all those frontmen who are closely linked must also be in the spotlight. Not only in the United States but also in Europe, in Spain, and in other countries."
To explain how repressors were able to enter despite being reported, Casanella mentioned the case of Mariano Faget, a senior official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Miami, convicted of espionage for Cuba after being arrested by the FBI on February 17, 2000. “He had the files and had the power to affect processes, to deny processes or to slow down and complicate immigration processes for activists while favoring others,” he stated.
Casanellas is not the only one affected. In the same migratory limbo are activists like Lázaro Uribe, Yuri Valle Roca, and Esteban Rodríguez, as he reported. The paradox he highlights—repressors with documentation, activists without status—he summarizes in one sentence: "They can act both inside and outside of Cuba, while we activists sometimes can't act either inside or outside of Cuba."
The activist drew a parallel with Venezuela, where children of Chavista officials live in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid enjoying comforts that, in his opinion, they could not afford without having plundered the state.
The repression against Casanella began in 2013, when State Security started to harass him due to his friendship with Ciro Javier Díaz Penedo, guitarist and composer of the rock band Porno para Ricardo. According to data from the Cuban Repressors project, by 2025, 152 alleged repressors of the regime had been identified living in the United States, out of a total of 1,146 identified globally.
"I believe it is very important for the repressors to face media, legal, and all kinds of consequences, because if they end up in Cuba repressing activists, censoring, imprisoning, and even incarcerating minors, and then can leave and start businesses and thrive in democracy, I believe we are lost," concluded Casanella.
Filed under: