Cuban citizens are among the more than 230 undocumented immigrants arrested during the Operation Guardian, a federal operation lasting 72 hours across 15 states carried out from October 26 to October 28, 2026, aimed at removing unauthorized commercial vehicle drivers from U.S. roadways.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the results on Monday at a press conference held at the Melton Trucking facilities in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Secretary Markwayne Mullin and the commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, Tim Tipton, detailed that the authorities inspected 1,005 commercial vehicles and that more than 40 of those detained were operating trucks without valid credentials.
Cuba appears on the official list of 19 countries of origin for those arrested, alongside Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, China, Haiti, and other nations. The DHS did not publish figures broken down by nationality, so the exact number of detained Cubans is not known.
Este operativo forma parte de una oleada de acciones migratorias que afectan a cubanos y otros inmigrantes en todo el país. Sigue los últimos desarrollos en nuestra sección de
The operation was originally designed by Oklahoma after detecting that drivers were attempting to evade state weigh stations. To prevent this, authorities coordinated with 14 additional states—among them Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, and Louisiana—so that drivers could not simply change routes to avoid the checks.
"When we started the operation, we noticed the online traffic and the drivers began to divert around Oklahoma," Mullin explained. "We had 14 states cooperating in the three-day operation, and we hope to repeat it across the country time and again."
Tipton highlighted the dimension of the problem in terms of road safety: "When someone drives a truck weighing 80,000 pounds without proper training and without the ability to read or speak English, we have witnessed the devastating effects of this across the country. It is our duty to try to prevent such acts."
The operation also revealed serious situations beyond traffic violations. One vehicle stopped was transporting six people, including a 17-year-old minor who had entered the country as an unaccompanied minor; the adults in the group were under investigation for sex trafficking. In another incident, a suspect driving a stolen vehicle assaulted an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer — causing an elbow dislocation and arm fracture — before fleeing into the woods, leading to a four-hour chase. The individual, identified as an undocumented Honduran, was found hiding in a tree and was in possession of methamphetamine.
Mullin also criticized states like California and New York for issuing commercial driver licenses without proper verification, pointing out that this practice endangers other drivers and harms businesses that operate within the law: "They wreak havoc on the companies that do things right. What we are trying to do, through the DHS and our state and local partners, is restore order and remove these unsafe drivers from the roads."
The Guardian Operation is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration against undocumented commercial drivers. From January 2025 until the date of the operation, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported 4,795 arrests related to commercial driver's licenses nationwide. The Cuban community in the U.S. has been repeatedly affected: in August 2026, ICE arrested a Cuban truck driver in Florida for having an expired license and a deportation order, and in September 2025 another Cuban was caught in a joint ICE raid in Oklahoma that resulted in 120 arrests.
Tipton announced that the operations will continue: "The good news is that we see the numbers declining. That's positive, but we are not going to let up."
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