Report: Cuban Pilot in Notorious Shootdown Incident Entered Under CHNV Parole

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the impacts — fiscal and otherwise — of a Biden-Harris program that allows tens of thousands of inadmissible nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States monthly, “CHNV parole”. Now, a former USCIS director claims one of those who took advantage of that scheme is a former Cuban military pilot who took part in a notorious 1996 operation in which two unarmed civilian planes were shot down, killing three U.S. citizens and a green card holder. The question’s no longer who the administration is letting in on CHNV parole — it’s who, if anyone, they’re keeping out.

“Brothers to the Rescue”. “Brothers to the Rescue” was a U.S.-based NGO that used small planes to search the waters between Florida and Cuba, looking for migrants who had taken to the high seas.

In February 1996, two Cessnas belonging to the organization were shot down by Cuban air force MiG-29 jets, killing Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Pena, and Pablo Morales. Costa, Alejandre, and de la Pena were U.S. citizens, while Morales was a Cuban national and lawful permanent resident.

Not surprisingly, a shootdown of unarmed prop planes by military jets triggered an international incident and a lot of finger-pointing and recrimination from both Havana and Washington.

As the Miami Herald reported at the time, the group had “sponsored thousands of missions across the Florida Straits, generally steering clear of Cuban airspace as they searched for wayward rafters”, though on two occasions its “pilots dropped leaflets over Cuba as part of their effort to incite revolution”.

Brothers to the Rescue admitted to dropping the leaflets but denied they were in Cuban airspace when they did so. The Herald was quick to note: “Still, the Brothers’ missions were almost universally regarded as humanitarian.”

A year after the incident, then-President Bill Clinton issued a statement explaining that a June 1996 investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization “confirmed that the shootdown was unlawful and without any justification”. Even the U.N. Security Council “strongly deplored Cuba's illegal use of violence against the aircraft”.

The shootdown was an extremely big deal at the time, and among certain Americans it still is. A whole codified section of the U.S. Foreign Relations Act, 22 U.S.C. § 6046, condemns the attack, and the Florida Democratic Party still issues memorial notices on the anniversary of the incident.

“Cuban Air Force Colonel ... Now Living Large in the US Under CHNV Humanitarian Parole”. Dr. Emilio Gonzalez served as director of USCIS under the Bush administration, and has been a dogged opponent of several of the current administration’s immigration programs.

On September 16, he tweeted:

That tweet followed up on an earlier one Gonzalez issued three days earlier:

The linked article appeared on September 13 in Periodico Cubano. It’s an outlet with which I am unfamiliar, so I will have to trust the former USCIS director about its legitimacy. And given that I am unable to read Spanish, I also have to rely on the Google translation for its contents.

With those caveats, the article claims that a former member of the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Defense Force (DAAFAR), who retired from DAAFAR as a colonel, has been living for the past couple of months in Florida after entering the United States on parole.

Yet another source I am unfamiliar with, Cuba Headlines, published an article about that Cuban national on September 14.

It explained that the former pilot in question “reportedly took part in the operation to shoot down the Brothers to the Rescue planes”, though “he was not directly responsible for the missile shots that downed the two aircraft”; he was instead tracking a third aircraft launched by the NGO.

As you’ve likely realized, I haven’t named the individual in question given my lack of familiarity with these news sources and my consequent uncertainty about their allegations. But still these claims raise serious questions other media outlets may want to confirm or rebut.

In my mind, “fact-checking” is the laziest and least-dependable form of journalism, though this is one instance in which it may do some good, if only to clear the name of the individual in question.

That said, Gonzalez is much more attuned to the Cuban American community than I am, and if he gives credence to these claims, I can’t simply dismiss them out of hand — and nor should any true journalistic outlet.

“Robust Security Vetting”. On its CHNV Parole website, USCIS claims that CHNV beneficiaries must “undergo and clear robust security vetting” to participate in the program.

If these stories about this retired DAAFAR colonel are true, they raise two questions.

First, did that “robust security vetting” reveal this individual’s (purported) previous affiliation with a hostile military force and his (alleged) participation in the February 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown?

If it did, and he was allowed in anyway, what criteria is the administration using to determine which CHNV applicants should be kept out? Would the pilots who actually shot down the Cessnas carrying Costa, Alejandre, de la Pena, and Morales clear USCIS’s robust security vetting, too, or is that just too much for whomever is making the call?

Keep in mind, this program has been running since January 2023 (or October 2022 for Venezuelans), and we still have no idea how DHS decides which CHNV nationals merit parole in the name of “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public interest” — the only two reasons DHS can grant parole under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The sole reason parole would ever be appropriate for a retired high-ranking member of a hostile foreign military force would be if that individual were either a defector with actionable intelligence or was slated to be a defendant in a U.S. criminal proceeding. All the rest picked their side and should live with the consequences.

Second, and alternatively, if USCIS had no idea that this guy held the positions Periodico Cubano and Cuba Headlines claimed, or that he at least tangentially participated in the February 1996 incident as they assert, how did those facts evade all that “robust security vetting” USCIS promised?

More than 28 years on, I trust U.S. intelligence knows the names of every Cuban pilot in the air that day, and what they did. Does anyone at DHS check with the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, or the Director of National Intelligence to see if they have any information on CHNV applicants?

If I lived in any of the CHNV countries, I’d likely be pretty anxious to get out and live here, too. But keep in mind that Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are socialist dictatorships, the leadership of which hates the United States and takes glee in our misfortunes. How do we — or can we — distinguish the aggressors, hostile actors, and persecutors in those countries from the victims?

As for Haiti, most of the residents are simply bystanders in the political battles and gang wars that have been fought there since the 1980s (and before), but how do we know that the leaders and instigators of the violence and persecution aren’t coming in, too?

Between the start of CHNV Parole and the end of May, nearly 173,000 Haitian nationals came in under the program, and close to 125,000 others had appointments under the Biden-Harris CBP One app interview scheme — almost 300,000 in total, or more than 2.5 percent of Haiti’s total population of 11.754 million.

Have any Tontons Macoutes, G9 Family and Allies triggermen, or G-Pep street fighters been among them? I’d be surprised if many in USCIS have any idea what those groups are, despite the fact that Harvard University described Haiti in March as “a gangster’s paradise”.

Don’t expect Jimmy Cherizier to include his nom de guerre, “Barbecue”, on his CHNV application, but if he did, would anybody catch it? When it comes to CHNV Parole, USCIS is running a “volume business”, which doesn’t lend itself to much in-depth scrutiny.

“A De-Facto Retirement Plan for State Sponsor of Terrorism ... Military Officers”. On September 14, Gonzalez tweeted the following:

The United States government should not be running “de-facto retirement plans” for any foreign nationals, let alone aliens who played key roles in ensuring the success of state sponsors of terrorism like Cuba. But looking at the laxness with which USCIS is approaching CHNV parole, how can we avoid it?