There was a time when Cuban Daniel Morejón García moved with authority among the inhabitants of Las Cañas, a town southwest of Havana that does not have a cemetery, but a factory of feed, a central street, a train line, a pharmacy, a park and a movie theater. Morejón, 57, is a tall, corpulent guy, even “good boy,” they say those who know him. He always dressed well and held a gun that was in view of the neighbors. Some call him “arrogant”, others say he liked to boast with the power they had granted. “I wanted to imitate the dictator Fidel Castro, and so he behaved,” says Maykel Bencomo, 43, who knows him as a child and remembers moving with a peculiar regularness among the common people of the reeds. But now the roles have been invested, and Morejón is not the one who intimidates, but the one who feels fear. It is not the one who sends anti -Castroist in jail in Cuba, but the inmate in the United States.
Andrea Betancourt, 55, remembers as if it were today the day when, in the same trial, she was reduced to three for a six -year condemnation of deprivation of liberty, and Morejón came out airy, free of any guilt. On July 11, 2021 – a date saved in recent Cuban history as the day thousands of people threw themselves into the streets demanding freedom and reforms – Andrea went to the town park, next to the demonstration that dragged dozens of people.
In a moment, he saw how Morejón, dressed as a civilian, pounced on his neighboring Armando Martínez Luis, 64, giving him not a few blows to everyone. “It was an abuse,” she says, who already served her condemnation for contempt of authority working in work in the field. Until that day, in the town they knew that Morejón had some authority, but not so much. It turned the reeds into a kind of ranch, where the Factory of Feed, the main restaurant, that the site where the famous banana shakes sold the famous. In the City of Artemisa, where he lived, he presumed of an “excessive luxury”, with houses that contrasted with those of the rest. Some say that “washed money” with certain MSMEs, as micro, small and medium -sized private companies in Cuba are known, and that it had links with the Gaesa military business group in the Mariel Special Development Zone. But it was July 11 when they knew that Morejón was a much more “dangerous” subject than they believed.
“The people itself did not know that they were a person with positions” in the Communist Party and the Government, Andrea says. The day of the protest, she was one of those who intervened so that Morejón took Martínez Luis, whom he hit with viciousness. The punishment for Andrea and four other people were sentences that reach until the eight years of deprivation of liberty for contempt of authority. Some still remain imprisoned in Guanajay prison. Morejón, however, rewarded him with a medal during a ceremony in the town park. “For their good work repressing the people who revealed themselves on July 11,” says Sonia, neighbor of Las Cañas, now exiled.
Four years after that event, in Las Cañas, a town where everyone is related, some have approached Andrea to talk about Morejón. Not only had he moved to the United States a while ago, but it transpired that “his repressor”, the man for whom he ended up serving a sentence, now remained in custody of the United States immigration and customs control service (ICE).
In the middle of last March, the Federal Agency publicly announced the arrest in Florida de Morejón, who had settled a while ago at the house of one of his daughters in Miami. In disseminated photos of the day of the arrest, the Cuban is seen with his face, handcuffed, while two police officers lead him to a car of the Department of Internal Security (DHS). “It was believed so infallible, that it came to end here, in Miami,” says Sonia, who cannot deny the relief of seeing him in custody of US immigration authorities.
The arrest, according to DHS, was carried out after an investigation revealed that Morejón made “fraudulent statements” when entering the country and hiding their affiliations with the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel. In his application for emigration, the Cuban omitted that he was a member of the Communist Party, agent of the Ministry of Interior, president of the National Defense Council of Artemis and member of the rapid response brigades, a kind of repressive squad from which the government puts hand to placate anti -system manifestations such as 2021. The US law is clear in its policies to address the “inadmissibility” of “any possible immigrant” o Affiliation to the Communist Party or any other “totalitarian party”, which they consider a “national security threat”.
Immigration lawyer Santiago Alpízar, who is in charge of Cuba demands, an initiative that has been denouncing the protection of Cuban “repressors” in the United States for more than ten years, assures El País that, allegedly lying in a request for residence or some type of immigration document, Morejón committed “at least one crime of perjury and, in addition, a migratory fraud, because it is trying to obtain a benefit with a benefit with a benefit with a benefit with a benefit with a benefit. hiding his repressive past. ” “Depending on the severity of the crime, you can fulfill sentences of up to 60 months in a federal prison,” he says.
Today, Morejón is in ICE custody and waiting for deportation to the island. Some neighbors of the reeds, who joined to denounce all the damage that Morejón caused in the town, assume their arrest as a victory. “I am very happy that justice is being done, that the people who have done so much damage to Cuba are returned,” says one of them, Katty, “she pretends not to give her last name,” but who has known him for years, since before emigrating to Mississippi. “It is an immense triumph, because, when I was a girl, in my house the police made records and threw me out of bed, and those people came to this exile and I could not do anything. Daniel believed herself so powerful, so important, that she thought she could come to this country. But no, Lord, you stay where they taught him to be a repressor.”
“I’m worried about seeing politicians acting as prosecutors”
Morejón is not the only Cuban repressor in the sights of the immigration authorities of the United States, but one of the 100 names that make up the list that the Republican congressman of Florida, Carlos Giménez, has facilitated to the US authorities to value their deportation to the island. “The presence of these regime operations not only endangers our communities, but also gives the Cuban regime a basis for espionage, political coercion and illegal activities within our borders,” said the congressman in a letter addressed to the secretary of the DHS, Kristi Noem.
Some of the most mentioned cases are those of the former Juana Orquídea Acanda Rodríguez, 62, deported to Cuba in April after entering the United States without informing about their links with the Communist Party. Other people arrested by the US authorities are Tomás Emilio Hernández Cruz, 71 and former member of Cuban intelligence, who allegedly lied to obtain his permanent residence, or former judge Melody González Pedraza, who in Cuba condemned four young people for going out to protest and now remains stopped in the United States.
In recent times, Republican politicians of Florida have accused of the influx of repressors – not only Cubans but from other countries such as Venezuela or Nicaragua – to the Democratic Administration of Joe Biden, for facilitating the entry of many migrants with programs such as Humanitarian Parole. Although the truth is that for decades the so -called repressors have also been part of the Cuban exodus, based mostly in the south of Florida, some see in this recent “hunt” a counterproductive political nuance for a community that, for the first time, is also facing the immigration irregularity.
“At the time Cuba is weaker in its history, instead of focusing on looking for solutions for the future, we have started with a witch hunt,” Florida Joe García’s former congressman tells El País. “I also fear that this is used as a Aragua train, to persecute Cubans.”
Some see in this “hunt” a similarity with the persecution that for decades the government has unleashed against those who oppose it, either by enlisting names or canceling those who think differently. There is also the risk of stigmatizing people who arrive from a country where it is practically mandatory to belong to political organizations such as the Communist Party or the Union of Young Communist (UJC).
“What worries me most is seeing politicians acting as prosecutors,” says Garcia. The lawyer insists that, for those who have committed verifiable abuses of the Cuban government, there are laws such as the Magnitsky, which applies to foreigners accused of corruption and human rights violations. “The Cuban nation is going to have to find in the future the best way to do justice. Horning things have been done on both sides, but what is unacceptable is that someone is accused by people who have no evidence and this becomes a political tactic to gain space.”
