Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated the legal status of a Cuban national who spent more than a decade running influence operations inside the United States on behalf of the communist Castro regime, and federal agents moved swiftly to arrest him, his wife, and his son.
Carlos Antonio Lloga Dominguez is now in federal custody pending removal from the country. The State Department confirmed the arrest Wednesday, describing Lloga Dominguez as a “foreign subversive” employed for more than a decade by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People, known as ICAP.
The State Department did not mince words. ICAP, it said, is “the central node in a sprawling Cuban intelligence and influence operation, claiming to span more than 2,000 organizations across more than 150 countries.”
Rubio had sanctioned ICAP earlier in June under Executive Order 14404, freezing all its U.S.-based assets and barring Americans from doing business with the group. Wednesday’s arrests mark the first physical expulsions tied directly to those sanctions.
The group was founded by Fidel Castro in 1960. Its current president, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, is a convicted Cuban spy who served 15 years in a U.S. federal prison for his role in the Wasp Network, a large-scale illegal spy ring the FBI broke up in Florida in the late 1990s.
According to the State Department, ICAP coordinates closely with American far-left organizations to advance Cuban communist objectives on U.S. soil, “trafficking in vile anti-American propaganda, cultivating pro-Havana regime activists and politicians, and lobbying federal, state and local politicians on behalf of the Cuban dictatorship.”
A Fox News investigation identified 145 nonprofits, labor groups, advocacy organizations, and activist collectives across the United States that have been mobilizing in support of the Cuban government, with the organizations reporting roughly $1 billion in combined revenue. Many are linked to far-left financier Neville Roy Singham and include well-known names such as CodePink, the People’s Forum, Breakthrough News, and the ANSWER Coalition.
The DOJ and Treasury Department are both investigating the broader alleged influence campaign.
“This is America First leadership in our region,” a senior State Department official told Fox News Digital of the arrests.
Rubio issued a direct warning in a statement: “America will never become home for foreign communists who peddle propaganda, run subversive influence operations, or support radical anti-American movements within the United States. Transact with ICAP and you will be sanctioned, prosecuted or deported from our country.”
The State Department added that foreign nationals involved in ICAP’s operations “should expect to soon find themselves on an ICE deportation flight.”
