by John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy
Biden allowed a Cuban Air Force pilot to stay here and apply for permanent residency. It turns out that the pilot, Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, served in the Cuban military at the same time that Fidel and Raul Castro ordered them to shoot down humanitarian rescue planes searching for people fleeing the communist regime.
A few weeks into President Donald Trump's second term, his
crackdown on illegal immigration netted an unexpected yield: a former
Cuban fighter pilot who had been allowed into the United States under
President Joe Biden and was trying to get permanent residency.
The 2025 arrest of Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, officials told Just the News,
set in motion an extraordinary set of events inside the U.S.
intelligence community, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami
that could yield the unveiling of an indictment as early as Wednesday
of former Cuban President Raul Castro on murder, conspiracy, and other
charges in the 1996 downing of two American humanitarian supply and
rescue planes in the skies near Cuba.
For 30 years, Cuban exiles in America and their
representatives in Congress, like Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos
Gimenez, R-Fla., have pressured DOJ to seek charges such as conspiracy
to kill Americans, destruction of aircraft, and murder against the
94-year-old Castro, his late brother Fidel, and others in connection
with the shooting down of the Hermanos a la Rescate ("Brothers to the
Rescue") humanitarian aircraft in 1996, which killed three American
citizens and one legal permanent U.S. resident.
Prosecutors and FBI agents for years demurred because they
lacked key evidence or access to conspirators, and eventually, Fidel
Castro, the island’s communist revolutionary leader who was given a
great deal of leeway by Obama and Biden, died.
But the stalemate seems to have changed with the 2025
arrest of Gonzalez-Pardo, which gave U.S. authorities access to a Cuban
Air Force insider who served during the same time of the shootdown. The
November 2025 indictment
against Gonzalez-Pardo for visa fraud and for lying to U.S. federal
authorities even included a photo of him in the sort of Air Force jet
used to shoot down the Cuban-American activist planes three decades ago,
Gonzalez-Pardo's defense lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Creation of a Cuban crimes task force
Months of investigation led the U.S. attorney's office in
Miami last fall to pursue an indictment in the case. Early this year,
the prosecution team led by Jason Reding Quinones escalated its efforts
with the creation of a Cuban crimes task force, according to memos
reviewed by Just the News.
“This Working Group will focus on identifying and
developing prosecutable violations of U.S. law connected to the Cuban
regime or Communist Party apparatus,” the February 2026 memo said,
pointing to “recent historic events in our hemisphere” and noting the
Southern District of Florida’s “unique nexus to Cuba.”
The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida issued a press release
last November to “announce the unsealing of an indictment charging Luis
Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez with fraud and misuse of visa, permits,
and other documents, and making a false statement to a federal agency.”
And last month, prosecutors began presenting the evidence
necessary to secure a grand jury indictment against Raul Castro and the
pilots who shot down the two Brothers to the Rescue planes. The aircraft
were part of an organization which delivers humanitarian supplies and
conducts searches for life rafts making their way from Cuba to Florida.
That indictment is expected to be announced Wednesday when prosecutors
have set a press conference.
Four activists from the Brothers to the Rescue organization
were killed when Cuban MiG fighters shot down their two civilian planes
in international skies and over international waters on February 24,
1996. The victims were Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario Manuel de la
Peña, and Armando Alejandre, three of whom were American citizens and
one of whom was a permanent resident of the U.S. A third Brothers
aircraft managed to successfully evade the Cuban MiG fighters and land
safely in Florida.
Raul Castro Ruz is the brother of the deceased longtime
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Raul is also a former president of Cuba
himself, having succeeded his brother in the role for a decade in the
wake of his brother’s 2008 death, and he is also the former Director of
the Cuban Secret Services, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban
Air Force, and the former President of the Ministry of the Cuban
Revolutionary Armed Forces.
He stepped down as Cuba’s president in 2018, where he was
succeeded by Miguel Diaz-Canel, and Raul Castro also stepped down as
first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2021.
Raul Castro: “Knock them down into the sea when they reappear."
Two decades ago, El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald published a 2006 tape in which Raul Castro allegedly acknowledged giving the shootdown order of the Brothers to the Rescue planes.
“I told them [the Cuban fighter pilots] to try to knock
them down over [Cuban] territory,” Raul Castro allegedly said in the
recording. “Knock them down into the sea when they reappear.”
Fidel Castro himself admitted to TIME
in 1996 that “I take responsibility for what happened” but also
confirmed that his brother, Raul, had been in the chain of command as
the leader of the Cuban Air Defense Forces.
“We discussed it with Raul and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,”
Fidel said, adding, “We gave the order to the head of the air force. On
Saturday, [the Brothers to the Rescue planes] came twice. ... On the
third pass, they scrambled and did their job. They shot the planes down.
They are professionals. They did what they believe is the right thing.”
Gonzalez-Pardo was reportedly
a Cuban MiG pilot who carried out an aerial pursuit of a third Brothers
to the Rescue plane the day that the other two planes were shot down.
He was allowed into the U.S. during the Biden Administration.
Marco Rubio — then a U.S. senator from Florida and now the U.S. Secretary of State — sent a letter
with Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken
and then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024 condemning the Biden
Administration for allowing him into the country.
Inadequate vetting of immigration applicants during Biden years
“We write with serious concern about the Biden-Harris
Administration’s decision to grant parole to Cuban Revolutionary Air
Force Colonel Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodríguez,” Rubio and Scott
wrote. “As you are no doubt aware, Gonzalez-Pardo is notoriously linked
to the international incident of February 24, 1996, when two planes
belonging to the humanitarian organization, Brothers to the Rescue, were
unconscionably shot down by Cuban MiG-29 fighter jets under orders of
Raul Castro. This incident tragically resulted in the deaths of four
innocent Cuban-American pilots.”
Rubio and Scott added: “The current process, by virtue of
the unacceptable results annotated above, has demonstrated its woeful
inadequateness to properly vet applicants and to protect U.S. national
security.”
A number of Republican members of Congress also sent
Blinken and Mayorkas a 2024 letter noting that “reports, as well as a
letter from survivors, contend that Gonzalez-Pardo participated in the
Brothers to the Rescue shootdown of 1996.”
“The families of these victims deserve justice. It was an
insult to them and a disgraceful travesty of justice that the Obama
Administration released the one person who had been held accountable for
their murders, Gerardo Hernandez, in a concession to the regime in
Cuba,” the congressmen wrote. “Now, the possibility that another person
who may have participated in that heinous act was granted the
extraordinary privilege of U.S. entry is yet another affront.”
Cuban pilot denied ever having military training
Telemundo 51 in Miami reported that Gonzalez-Pardo called the accusations of involvement with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown "absolutely false.”
The DOJ’s press release
on Gonzalez-Pardo late last year stated that, in April 2025, the Cuban
pilot had submitted paperwork to the Department of Homeland Security as
he pursued permanent residency inside the U.S., with the DOJ saying the
Cuban “falsely stated he had never received any weapons or military
training, never participated in any group of any kind that used weapons
or threatened to use weapons, and never served in a military or police
unit, when in reality, he received such training and served in the Cuban
military as part of the Air Defense Force.”
The indictment even included a photograph depicting Gonzalez-Pardo in the Air Defense Force.
“This man’s past as a longtime military pilot for the evil
Castro regime — which has wrought untold suffering on the Cuban people —
should have been front and center in his immigration file,”
then-Attorney General Pamela Bondi said last year. “This Department of
Justice will vigorously prosecute anyone who lies about their past to
take advantage of America’s immigration system.”
The indictment,
filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida but
led by the prosecutors in Miami, hit Gonzalez-Pardo with two counts.
The first was for “fraud and misuse of visa, permits, and other
documents” while the second was for a “false statement to a federal
agency.”
The arrest warrant shows he was arrested in early November 2025 in Jacksonville, Florida. Gonzalez-Pardo filed a notice of intent to plead guilty in early February 2026.
The plea agreement filed in early February 2026 showed he had pleaded guilty to the first count and the DOJ agreed to drop the second count.
The court docket in early February said that the criminal
sentencing was originally set for Monday in front of a federal judge,
but in late April the sentencing hearing was pushed back into late May.
The Miami Herald reported
in 2024 that “activists and survivors of the incident suspect
Gonzalez-Pardo was one of the pilots of two Cuban MiGs that chased three
small civilian aircraft belonging to the Cuban exile organization
Brothers to the Rescue.
A Biden State Department spokesperson told the outlet at
the time that “visa records are confidential under U.S. law; therefore,
we cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases.”
The outlet reported that Luis Dominguez — described as “a
researcher who regularly tracks the whereabouts of former members of the
Cuban government” — said that he “believes González-Pardo chased the
aircraft piloted by Jose Basulto, the leader of Brothers to the Rescue,
the only plane that escaped that day.”
It was also reported by the outlet that Orestes Lorenzo, a
former Cuban military pilot, told the outlet that Gonzalez-Pardo was “a
former classmate” and had “told him on a WhatsApp message earlier this
month that he was one of the Cuban pilots involved in the incident.”
“I asked him if he was the one chasing Basulto, and he
replied yes, that he was the one who had chased him that day,” Lorenzo
told the outlet.
The Miami Herald also previously reported
that “in 1998, two years after the attack, federal authorities arrested
several members of a Cuban spy network operating in the U.S. The
network’s leader, Gerardo Hernandez, was convicted of conspiring to kill
the Brothers to the Rescue pilots. He was returned to Cuba in 2014 as
part of a prisoner swap.”
“In 2003, a U.S. grand jury indicted Gen. Ruben Martínez
Puente — who headed the Cuban air force at the time of the incident —
and the two pilots of one of the Cuban MiGs, Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez
and Francisco Perez-Perez, for the murder of the four men,” the outlet
added.
Then-President Bill Clinton quickly condemned the attack at the time.
Havana's "appalling" desperation noted by Clinton
“Saturday’s attack is further evidence that Havana has
become more desperate in its efforts to deny freedom to the people of
Cuba,” Clinton said in February 1996, adding that “Saturday’s attack was
an appalling reminder of the nature of the Cuban regime, repressive,
violent, scornful of international law.”
The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization conducted an investigation
in 1996 which included a “condemnation of the use of weapons against
civil aircraft in flight as being incompatible with elementary
considerations of humanity and the rules of customary international
law.”
The U.S. Congress quickly condemned the Cuban attack in 1996.
“The Congress strongly condemns the act of terrorism by the
Castro regime in shooting down the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft on
February 24, 1996,” the resolution stated. “The Congress extends its
condolences to the families of Pablo Morales, Carlos Costa, Mario de la
Pena, and Armando Alejandre, the victims of the attack. The Congress
urges the President to seek, in the International Court of Justice, an
indictment for this act of terrorism by Fidel Castro.”
While Fidel Castro died before facing justice for his role
in the attack, it now seems quite likely that, three decades after that
dark day, Raul Castro and other co-conspirators will soon be indicted
for their own roles in the shootdown.
John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/unexpected-arrest-during-trumps-border-crackdown-opens-door-cuba-shaking-raul
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