US Justice Department prosecutor weighs cases against Cuban leaders as Trump floats ‘friendly takeover’

The top Justice Department prosecutor in Miami is weighing criminal investigations against officials of the Cuban government, according to people familiar with the matter. The move comes as President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.

Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has set up a working group that includes federal prosecutors and officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to build potential cases against individuals linked to the Cuban government and its Communist Party, one of the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the effort.

It remains unclear which Cuban officials the office may be targeting or what specific criminal charges prosecutors could pursue.

In a statement on Friday, the Justice Department said federal prosecutors across the country work daily to pursue justice, including efforts aimed at combating transnational crime.

The initiative comes amid Trump’s increasingly hardline stance toward Cuba’s communist leadership. After the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a close ally of Havana, Trump said last month that his administration had been holding high-level talks with officials in Cuba about what he called a potential “friendly takeover” of the country. He repeated the claim this week, saying his attention would shift back to Cuba once the conflict with Iran winds down.

“They want to make a deal so bad,” Trump said of Cuba’s leadership.

Although Cuba has receded as a major national security concern for Washington in recent decades, it remains a priority for the US Attorney’s office in Miami, where the political, economic and cultural landscape is strongly influenced by Cuban-American exiles.

The FBI’s Miami field office maintains a dedicated Cuba group that helped arrest former US ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha in 2024 on charges of secretly working as an agent for Cuba since the 1970s.

In recent weeks, several Miami Republicans — along with Florida Senator Rick Scott — have urged the Trump administration to reopen a criminal probe into the 1996 shootdown of four aircraft flown by anti-communist exiles. Lawmakers argue that former Cuban president Raúl Castro, who headed Cuba’s military at the time, ordered the attack.

While no federal indictment has been announced against Castro, Florida’s attorney general has said the state will reopen its own investigation into the incident.

The Trump administration has also accused Cuba of failing to cooperate with US counterterrorism efforts, maintaining its designation alongside countries such as North Korea and Iran as state sponsors of terrorism. The designation partly stems from Havana’s harboring of US fugitives and its refusal to extradite several Colombian rebel leaders during peace talks with Colombia.

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