U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Wednesday announced the deportation of a Cuban communist regime spy who had fraudulently obtained a U.S. Green Card in the past.
ICE explained in an official press release that Fernando Armando Valdés Pérez is a 61-year-old Cuban man with Guatemalan dual citizenship who previously resided in Kendall, Florida. For years, the man concealed his communist past and affiliation with the Castro regime to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the United States.
Investigators determined that Valdés Pérez was a Cuban intelligence asset tasked by the Castro regime with infiltrating and spying on Cuban exile and dissident communities in Latin America and the United States — conducting espionage operations for the rogue communist regime since as early as the mid-1990s. The communist spy was arrested on July 10 at Miami International Airport during an administrative immigration enforcement action conducted by officials from ICE, FBI Miami, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“Individuals who conceal ties to foreign intelligence services and exploit our immigration system pose a serious threat to the integrity of that system and to our national security,” Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Miami Field Office Director Matthew Elliston said. “ICE will continue working with our federal partners to identify, arrest, and remove those who obtain immigration benefits through fraud.”
Valdés Pérez was removed from the United States on August 7. ICE did not disclose if the Cuban spy was sent back to Cuba or deported to a third country.
ICE revealed that Valdés Pérez had gained the confidence of late Cuban anti-communist activist Luis Posada Carriles and remained in close proximity with other Cuban and Cuban-American figures in South Florida all the way until his arrest. Posada Carriles died of cancer in 2018 at the age of 90.
The Miami Herald reported that Valdés Pérez’s proximity to Posada Carriles’s circle of trust led to him being featured in the activist’s obituary for the outlet. He had even organized Posada Carriles’s last birthday party. A public records search conducted by the Herald reportedly found a Kendall address for Valdés Pérez as well as a hunting and fishing license and a cigar company, all registered to the same address.
Lee County court documents reviewed by Martí Noticias reportedly confirm that Valdés Pérez maintained his residence in Kendall and moved through Florida just four months before his detention. A past citation for failure to obey a traffic control signal further confirmed the man’s identity and residence in Kendall, Martí Noticias detailed.
Cuban dissident Orlando González spoke with Martí Noticias on Wednesday and recounted that he met Valdés Pérez when Luis Posada Carriles and other Cuban dissidents were detained in Panama in 2000. At the time, González said, he conducted frequent trips to Panama to visit the detainees. The Cuban spy presented himself as someone close to the group during one such trip. Since then, González began to be suspicious of Valdés Pérez’s intentions and how “easy” it seemed for the man to obtain authorizations and gain access to contacts within the Panamanian security authorities.
“This man appears out of nowhere, comes every week, spends a fortune, and arranges a visit with the police chief. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’” González said he once asked the Cuban detainees.
Luis Domínguez, a Cuban researcher and member of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, told Martí Noticias that people who were close to Posada Carriles provided similar accounts of the Cuban spy’s presence in Panama and subsequent connection with the Cuban exile community in Miami. Domínguez, citing sources, detailed that Valdés Pérez frequently accompanied Posada Carriles, drove him to various locations, and even organized celebrations at his home — including his last birthday party in 2018.
“From Panama, he was very close to Posada Carriles and involved in visits to the prison. Other people had told me the same thing Orlando is saying,” Domínguez told Martí Noticias.
Domínguez affirmed that several people in the Cuban exile community distrusted Valdés Pérez and would leave meetings when they saw the now-deported spy arrive. According to Domínguez, individuals had “directly warned” of the man, but he had “developed a relationship of trust and affection” with the deported spy.
The announcement of the deportation of Fernando Armando Valdés Pérez comes one week after ICE announced the deportation of Rafael José Quero Silva, a Venezuelan military colonel widely accused of torturing and repressing numerous dissidents of Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime in the early 2010s during the rule of deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.