Former MINREX official Jorge Javier Rodríguez Cabrera crossed the southern border of the United States in 2022.
MIAMI, United States. – Former official of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) Jorge Javier Rodríguez Cabrera, known for his closeness to Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castroknown as El Cangrejo, disappeared from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainee system, even though his asylum case is still marked as “pending” in the records of the Las Vegas Immigration Court.
The journalist Mario Pentón, who interviewed researcher Luis Domínguez this Mondayof the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, assured in a live broadcast that “at this moment” Rodríguez Cabrera “is not in ICE custody.”
The reporter indicated that he had sent “several emails to ICE asking for information on the issue” and added that “not a single one has responded.” The absence of an official response adds, according to the journalist, to the secrecy surrounding the conditions under which the release of the former Cuban official took place. arrested in Las Vegas on July 22.
During the broadcast, Domínguez showed documents from the Las Vegas Immigration Court on Rodríguez Cabrera’s file. “The case is pendingthat is, there is no decision. He was presented before a judge,” he explained, before detailing that the Cuban “had a final asylum hearing” and, “suddenly, he has been released from detention.”
On September 9, CubaNet verified that the Automated Case Information System (EOIR) marked Rodríguez Cabrera’s process as “pending” and that the individual asylum hearing was set for October 2 before Judge Glen R. Baker, in Las Vegas. The ICE Detainee Locator also confirmed his stay in custody at the Nevada Southern Detention Center.
The new information indicates that, although the case does not record a final decision, Rodríguez Cabrera would have been released at the discretion of the US immigration authorities. “We don’t understand what is happening,” Domínguez acknowledged.
Friend of The Crab
Rodríguez Cabrera was a MINREX official and maintained close ties with Raúl Castro’s family environment. After arriving in the United States, he became administrator of the shipping and tourist services company Gran Azul LLC, based in Nevada and present in several cities in the country.
According to reports of Martí NewsRodríguez Cabrera crossed the southern border in 2022 with his wife and two children, before requesting political asylum. Shortly after, he settled in Las Vegas, where he worked in small businesses and in pool cleaning, before appearing, in November 2024, as manager of Gran Azul LLC, a company that offers door-to-door services, logistics, sales of cars and basic items, as well as tourist packages to Cuba.
In this Monday’s broadcast, Pentón recalled exclusive images that he broadcast on América TeVé about the luxury life of El Cangrejo. In these videos, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro is seen on a Castro family yacht, along with Rodríguez Cabrera and their respective partners, surrounded by “shrimp, lobster [y] all kinds of delicacies from the sea.” The journalist pointed out that Rodríguez Cabrera’s then wife, Isabel, exclaimed in the recording “It seems like I’m dreaming,” because she was “on a yacht with all kinds of luxuries.”
“We are talking about a level of complicity, a level of friendship that is not common,” the journalist noted. In another photograph, taken during a visit by Raúl Castro to New York, Rodríguez Cabrera is seen next to the former Cuban ruler and his grandson El Cangrejo. Domínguez specified that Jorge Javier’s father also appears in that image, “who had the same name as him” and that “he was also a diplomatic courier.” [un cargo dentro del MINREX]”.
Domínguez provided additional data about Rodríguez Cabrera’s career in Cuba. He pointed out that, at the time he worked as a diplomatic courier for MINREX, “he lived in a very wealthy place in the city of Havana.”
The investigator also recalled that the young man “entered the southern border of the United States and said he was afraid of socialism, of communism.” However, “the reality is that Jorge Javier was always privileged in communism, we saw him traveling with a diplomatic passport to the United States,” said Pentón.
Domínguez explained that Rodríguez Cabrera and his partner had separated and that both the ex-wife and the children already have residence in the country, unlike him, whose immigration status remains linked to an asylum process without resolution.
To date, neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security have made public the reasons for the alleged release of Rodríguez Cabrera, nor the conditions under which it would have occurred.
