A Cuban citizen identified as Raidel Gato was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday after being convicted of robbery while armed with a firearm or other deadly weapon in Miami, Florida, according to an official statement from the Department of Homeland Security published this Wednesday.
The case of Gato was included in the campaign “Lo peor de lo peor” (“Worst of the Worst”), an initiative by the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration that publishes nearly daily press releases with photographs and details of arrests of undocumented immigrants with serious criminal histories.
In the same statement, four other detainees of different nationalities are mentioned: Benjamin Tomas-Reynoso, from Guatemala, convicted of child abuse and neglect of an eight-year-old in Tennessee; Martin Guerrero-Guerrero, from Mexico, convicted of drug trafficking in New Mexico; Ediberto Lopez-Lopez, from Mexico, convicted of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and aggravated flight in Oklahoma; and Jesus Chavira-Ramirez, from Mexico, convicted of arson in Ohio.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, signed the statement and bluntly warned: "If you are here illegally, we will hunt you down and send you back to where you came from."
The arrest of Raidel Gato occurs amidst a sustained escalation of ICE operations against Cubans in U.S. territory. According to available data, the detentions of Cubans by ICE increased by 463% between October 2024 and January 2026.
The migratory pressure on the Cuban community does not stop there. Over 42,000 Cubans have final deportation orders pending in the United States, and just last June, immigration courts issued more than 1,600 new deportation orders against citizens of the island.
In the Miami metropolitan area, Cubans have become the nationality with the highest number of arrests by ICE: between August 2025 and August 2026, 131 of the 451 detained in Miami-Dade were Cuban.
In recent days, two other Cubans had been featured in the same campaign.
On August 27, ICE arrested Karel Pineda, who was convicted of first-degree sexual offense with a minor and arson in North Carolina.
A day later, ICE arrested Manuel Victores-Alzola, a resident of Miami, with three convictions for sexual offenses involving a minor within his own family.
The Department of Homeland Security maintains the public portal WOW.DHS.Gov, where any citizen can check the profiles of detained immigrants with criminal backgrounds.
At the end of July, this database was expanded with 5,000 additional names, exceeding a total of 35,000 records, among which are more than a thousand Cubans included in the list since the campaign began.
El arresto de Raidel Gato es uno de los muchos casos que reflejan la intensificación de las operaciones de ICE en Florida y en todo el país. Sigue todos los detalles en nuestra sección de
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