A former provincial-level Communist Party chief who belonged to Fidel Castro’s “coordination and support team” arrived in Miami, Florida, on Thursday through a “family reunification” program – and immediately assaulted a reporter asking him how he got there.
Martí Noticias journalist Mario Pentón confronted Manuel Menéndez Castellanos at Miami International Airport upon his arrival from Cuba, hoping to ask how U.S. officials allowed him into the country given his decades of service to the Communist Party. Menéndez Castellanos has appeared frequently in the pages of the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma, offering supportive propaganda quotes for at least two decades.
Menéndez is the latest in a series of individuals from Cuba with ties to the regime and histories of participating in repression believed to be taking advantage of several immigration programs under leftist President Joe Biden, presumably intended to benefit their victims, to come to America. The incident also follows an embarrassing scene at Miami International Airport on May 20, Cuban Independence Day, when Transportation Security Administration (TSA) gave a Cuban Communist Party delegation a tour of sensitive security areas. Cuba is a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism with an extensive history of engaging in anti-American espionage and other nefarious activity.
On Thursday, as Menéndez appeared to leave his gate, Pentón approached him and confirmed his identity, but when the reporter attempted to ask him questions, Menéndez attacked him, apparently attempting to seize or destroy his cameraphone. Pentón kept control of his phone and posted the video online.
Camuflajeado con mascarilla sanitaria, gorra y camiseta rosada llegó este jueves a Miami el ex dirigente del Partido Comunista de Cuba Manuel Menéndez Castellanos. Durante décadas fue una poderosa figura del régimen, hoy viene a retirarse a Miami en compañía de su familia. No… pic.twitter.com/mL7L8NgsMR
— Mario J. Pentón (@MarioJPenton) August 16, 2024
While refusing to comment, Menéndez told Pentón, “I’m going home,” suggesting he is staying in the United States for the long term.
The incident caused commotion at the airport, the reporter later said in a video posted to social media, recalling that several individuals at the airport expressed outrage at discovering a Fidel Castro crony in their midst. One person reportedly shouted by way of warning, “Communism has arrived!”
The Martí Noticias journalist wrote in his report on the incident that Menéndez was approved to enter America through a “family reunification process.” In his video, Pentón explained that the “family reunification” process in theory should require American officials to question potential beneficiaries about any history that they may have with the Communist Party, leaving unclear how he was approved to come to the United States.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has an active program known as “Cuban Family Reunification Parole” (CFRP) in which American citizens and permanent residents can request entry to the country for their relatives in Cuba.
“Created in 2007, the CFRP Program allows certain eligible U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (LPRs) to apply for parole for their family members in Cuba,” the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website explains. “If granted parole, these family members may come to the United States without waiting for their immigrant visas to become available.”
The website explains that beneficiaries of the program must pass a background check.
Prior to his apparent retirement in Miami, Menéndez served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party in Cienfuegos, south-central Cuba, near the Bay of Pigs. Granma for years regularly mentioned him as an honored guest at many Party events and referred to him as a source for official statements. In 1998, for example, Granma cited Menéndez on an article about the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), Cuba’s neighborhood spy networks, in which he “highlighted the positive changes that CDR organizations have made lately in the province.”
The CDRs are currently led by Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, a former spy whose work in the United States led to the massacre of four Americans in 1996. Hernández was arrested for his efforts in the United States, but President Barack Obama freed him in 2014 in after facilitating the shipment of his sperm to his wife for the purposes of long-distance artificial insemination.
Elsewhere in the pages of Granma, Menéndez urged revolutionaries in 2001 to “always remain unsatisfied” with the quality of communism and “strengthen community work and the labor of all those centers that, in one way or another, are linked to the gradual increase of the cultural level of the masses.”
Martí Noticias noted that, in his official biography, Menéndez boasted of joining the Castro regime in 1972 and worked as a member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, as well as the “coordination and support team” around Fidel Castro personally. Menéndez was respected enough, the outlet noted, to be sent to international events to represent the regime in Venezuela and Yemen.
Menéndez’s case is far from an isolated one under President Biden. Martí Noticias has identified several other individuals with ties to the regime entering the country, including multiple family members of Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, though his son was ultimately stopped from flying into America. Another notable case is that of former Judge Melody González Pedraza, a “humanitarian parole” beneficiary identified as responsible for “countless human rights violations” through excessive sentencing of peaceful dissidents to prison. Arelys Casañola Quintana, a former president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power on the Isla de la Juventud island, entered the United States in May; Pentón noted in his coverage on Thursday that she is believed to currently reside in Kentucky.