MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — Fernando Valdes, a Cuban intelligence asset, had been living in Miami-Dade County’s Kendall area, according to federal agents.
For decades, Valdes, 61, also known as Fernando Armando Valdes Perez, pretended to oppose communism on the island, according to the feds.
Cuba had tasked him with “infiltrating and reporting on Cuban exile and dissident communities in Latin America and the United States as early as the mid-1990s,” according to Nestor Yglesias, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman.
“Valdes gained the trust and confidence of late anti-Castro dissident Luis Posada Carriles and remained in close proximity to other well-known Cuban and Cuban American figures in South Florida until his arrest,” Yglesias wrote in a statement released on Wednesday afternoon.
Valdes, a Cuban national and Guatemalan citizen, had permanent U.S. residency status, according to Yglesias. It was done fraudulently, according to Matthew Elliston, the director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ Miami Field Office.
“Individuals who conceal ties to foreign intelligence services and exploit our immigration system pose a serious threat to the integrity of that system and to our national security,” Elliston said in a statement. “ICE will continue working with our federal partners to identify, arrest and remove those who obtain immigration benefits through fraud.”
ICE worked with FBI Miami and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to arrest Valdes on July 10 at Miami International Airport, and he was deported on Aug. 7, according to Yglesias.
“Following his arrest, Valdes was processed, placed in removal proceedings and removed,” Yglesias wrote in a statement.
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