The Justice Department has formed a working group to examine possible federal charges against officials or entities within Cuba’s government, according to an official familiar with the group.
The formation of the group could be a significant step in the Trump administration’s public push to topple the regime in Cuba.
Officials from government agencies including the Treasury Department will be part of the recently formed group. Treasury’s involvement could mean the Trump administration is considering further sanctions against Cuba, already the subject of intense U.S. economic sanctions.
The working group is exploring potential crimes related to immigration, economics and more. Another person familiar with the working group said federal prosecutors in Florida are also working with local partners in the state to bring potential charges against Cuban officials.
The effort to bring charges against Cuban officials coincides with President Donald Trump saying that his administration is eyeing Cuba as the next country whose government might be overthrown, following the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in early January and the killing of Iran’s supreme leader last Saturday.
“We want to finish this one first,” Trump said Thursday, referring to the current attack on Iran. It “will be just a question of time” before Cuba’s government falls, and “you and a lot of unbelievable people are going to be going back to Cuba, hopefully not to stay,” he told a White House audience that included a large number of Republicans from South Florida, many of Cuban descent.
“I just want to wait a couple of weeks,” he added. On Friday, in an interview with CNN, he repeated that Cuba “is going to fall very soon.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida — which includes Miami, the center of the Cuban exile community — will be overseeing the prosecution group, according to the official familiar with the matter, who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal plan that has not yet been made public.
Jason Reding Quiñones, who heads the office, is also overseeing a probe aimed at former officials of the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations whom Trump accuses of bringing politically motivated investigations against him.
“Federal prosecutors from across the country work every day to pursue justice, which includes efforts to combat transnational crime,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
The Cuba prosecution effort could, in part, follow the model the administration used to remove Maduro from power. The Justice Department indicted Maduro in 2020, although the leader was not extradited at the time. In January, the administration launched an attack on Venezuela, capturing Maduro and bringing him to New York to face charges.
Several former prosecutors from the Miami U.S. attorney’s office told The Washington Post that they were not surprised that the office would be leading an effort specifically focused on Cuba-related prosecutions. The Miami office has a long history of handling high-profile cases involving wrongdoing tied to the Cuban regime.
The U.S. has, for example, long charged that GAESA, a military business conglomerate that controls vast portions of the Cuban economy, including tourism, foreign imports and currency flows, is a center of state corruption.
In 2024, the office secured the conviction of Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. diplomat who admitted to gathering intelligence for Cuba for more than four decades while holding sensitive roles in the U.S. State Department and National Security Council.
Attorneys in the office also led a significant prosecution in the early 2000s against five Cuban intelligence officers who were arrested in the United States and accused of seeking to infiltrate anti-Castro Cuban American groups. The group, known as the Cuban Five, was convicted at trial. President Barack Obama released several of its members in a 2014 prisoner exchange as part of his administration’s efforts to establish more normalized relations with Cuba.
Last month, several Republican members of Florida’s congressional delegation urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to reopen an investigation into a 1996 incident, in which Cuban forces shot down two unarmed civilian planes operated by a Miami-based Cuban exile group called Brothers to the Rescue. Four people were killed.
The group was scouring nearby waters for refugees seeking to escape to the U.S. at the time.
The U.S. lawmakers, in a Feb. 13 letter, alleged that Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president and brother of Fidel Castro, ordered the attack while serving as the head of the nation’s military.
They pushed Trump administration officials to indict him and cited audio recordings of Raúl Castro discussing the incident that they said could help build a case.
“We believe unequivocally that Raul Castro is responsible for this heinous crime,” read the letter signed by Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, Carlos A. Gimenez and Nicole Malliotakis. “It is time for him to be brought to justice.”
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the efforts of two U.S. companies seeking compensation for assets seized by Cuba 65 years ago. Success in those efforts could open the door to a large number of additional lawsuits.
Officials from South Florida have also urged the Justice Department to take action against the Cuban regime over a recent incident in which Cuban soldiers opened fire on a speedboat registered in Florida as it approached the island. The gunfire killed four of the boat’s armed passengers, including a U.S. citizen, and wounded another six.
Cuban officials charged the survivors this week, alleging that they and those killed were Cubans living in the United States intent on infiltrating the island to commit acts of terrorism.
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Reding Quiñones, expressed skepticism about that conclusion in a statement shortly after the shooting, saying: “The facts remain unclear and conflicting.”
He vowed a thorough investigation.
“We will follow the facts wherever they lead and pursue answers through every legal and diplomatic channel available,” he said. “We owe that to the victims, their families, and to the rule of law. More to come as we learn more.”
Kadia Goba, Karen DeYoung and Adam Taylor contributed to this report.
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