Inside the Failed Armed Expedition to Topple Cuba’s Regime
Wall Street Journal
Feb-27-2026
In recent weeks, family members of a group of Cuban dissidents who overheard their making plans to “liberate Cuba” dismissed the talk as the kind of bravado that is common among Cuban-American exiles.
Ten of them this past week boarded a speedboat for what one of them told relatives was a fishing trip. A few hours later, four were killed after engaging in gunfire with Cuban security forces near the island’s northern coast.
Cuba’s Interior Ministry said the group, which U.S. officials said included two American citizens, were carrying assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, bulletproof vests, telescopic sights and camouflage uniforms.
Six of them were injured after the gunfire and transferred to the island to receive medical care. One of the U.S. citizens on board was killed, and the other was injured and is now held in custody by Cuban authorities, according to a U.S. official.
Relatives said that the men lacked military training and capabilities and that they had unrealistic expectations. They said the men were hoping to infiltrate the island little by little and spark a rebellion against a bankrupt regime mired in one of its worst economic crises.
They coordinated on a WhatsApp chat group to equip themselves with a stash of weapons and tactical gear. In a video posted on Facebook, two of them showed off various rifles, bragging about Serbian and Russian guns and demonstrating their capabilities.
Relatives said they now believe the ragtag group’s mission was doomed from the start. They suspect that the plan was compromised and that the boat was ambushed.
Cuba’s Embassy in Washington declined to comment and referred to statements by the country’s Interior Ministry describing the incident. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment.
Despite Cuba’s economic collapse, worsened by an oil embargo recently imposed by the Trump administration, the vast security apparatus of the communist regime has been effective in suppressing dissent on the island. Its General Directorate of Intelligence has long monitored and infiltrated the activities of Cuban exile groups in the U.S.
“We know of plans for terrorist acts that are being supported, financed and prepared in the United States to attack Cuba at a time like this,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in early February. “We will provide the information in due course.”
The incident appeared to catch the Trump administration off guard. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban migrants, arrived in St. Kitts and Nevis at 4 a.m. Wednesday for a summit with Caribbean leaders. He was informed that Cuban authorities had alerted the U.S. Coast Guard about the incident.
“Suffice it to say, it’s highly unusual to see shootouts at open sea like that,” Rubio told reporters traveling with him, adding that U.S. officials were seeking access to the men who had been injured. “We have our Embassy on the ground in Havana working this as we speak.”
The clash comes at a critical juncture for Washington’s tense dealings with Havana, showing how quickly sensitive discussions can be overtaken by unpredictable actors on the margins.
The Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the communist regime by the end of the year. U.S. officials, including Rubio, have quietly been engaging in discussions with Cuban officials and intermediaries.
“The Cuban government is talking with us, they’re in a great deal of trouble, they have no money, no anything,” President Trump said Friday. “Maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover.”
On Thursday, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos de Cossío blamed U.S. inaction for allowing the U.S.-based group to “act with impunity” despite repeated intelligence warnings from Cuba. None of the family members who spoke to The Wall Street Journal said they had been contacted by U.S. law enforcement.
Cuban authorities initially incorrectly identified one of the detainees as Roberto Azcorra Consuegra, a dissident living in the U.S., raising questions about what Cuba’s regime knew about the plot.
Consuegra escaped from a Bahamian prison in 2017 and reached the U.S. He said he often had talks about Cuba with these men at the Versailles restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, a lively venue where Cuban exiles have hatched previous plans to topple the regime while sipping Cuban-style black coffee.
“I’ve been an activist since I was in Cuba,” said Consuegra, referring to Cuba’s state security services. “They know me.”
Consuegra was surprised to learn that the group was confronted in a remote area along small keys just off Cuba’s northern coast. “It’s like the Cuban dictatorship was waiting for them,” he said in an interview.
Consuegra was among a group of supporters who held a vigil in Little Havana in Miami on Thursday for the men who were killed and injured. One man held a sign that said, “INTERVENE NOW. NO DIALOGUE.” Even before details of the incidents were known, some Florida politicians seized on the episode to press Washington to take a harder line against Havana.
Rep. Carlos Giménez (R., Fla.) called the incident a “massacre” and said “the regime in Cuba must be relegated to the dustbin of history.”
The incident has all the characteristics of an intelligence infiltration, said Enrique García, a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. In many cases over the past decades, many Cuban exile activists were unaware that the Cuban regime knew of their plans to kill Fidel Castro or launch armed incursions.
“Many were ambushed, died in combat, or were imprisoned for many years,” he said. That was the case of Alpha 66, the paramilitary group formed by Cuban exiles in the 1960s. Members operated as double agents to sabotage efforts.
García finds it dubious that the group of dissidents were swiftly intercepted in broad daylight by a Cuban border guard vessel in a remote coastal area, especially given Cuba’s acute fuel shortages and the deterioration of Cuba’s military boats.
The date the dissidents departed was significant to the group because it marked the 30th anniversary of the Cuban military’s downing of two civilian airplanes, which killed four Cuban nationals on a humanitarian mission by the U.S. activist group Brothers to the Rescue. It was later revealed that the activist group was infiltrated by Juan Pablo Roque, a Cuban spy who posed as a defector and vanished just before the aircraft shootdown only to emerge in Havana.
Among the dead from the gunfire is Ledián Padrón Guevara, a young man who appears wielding rifles in the video posted on Facebook alongside Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara, who is currently in Cuban custody. Before the mission, the two worked together as delivery-truck drivers in Miami.
Also in custody is Conrado Galindo Sariol, who arrived in Florida with Cuban rafters. Roberto Alvarez Avila, a father of three young daughters, survived the shootout and remains injured on the island. His wife said relatives in northern Cuba still don’t know his situation because they have been without electricity for days, unable to charge their cellphones and talk to family.
“I’m very proud of him,” she said.
Feb-27-2026
In recent weeks, family members of a group of Cuban dissidents who overheard their making plans to “liberate Cuba” dismissed the talk as the kind of bravado that is common among Cuban-American exiles.
Ten of them this past week boarded a speedboat for what one of them told relatives was a fishing trip. A few hours later, four were killed after engaging in gunfire with Cuban security forces near the island’s northern coast.
Cuba’s Interior Ministry said the group, which U.S. officials said included two American citizens, were carrying assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, bulletproof vests, telescopic sights and camouflage uniforms.
Six of them were injured after the gunfire and transferred to the island to receive medical care. One of the U.S. citizens on board was killed, and the other was injured and is now held in custody by Cuban authorities, according to a U.S. official.
Relatives said that the men lacked military training and capabilities and that they had unrealistic expectations. They said the men were hoping to infiltrate the island little by little and spark a rebellion against a bankrupt regime mired in one of its worst economic crises.
They coordinated on a WhatsApp chat group to equip themselves with a stash of weapons and tactical gear. In a video posted on Facebook, two of them showed off various rifles, bragging about Serbian and Russian guns and demonstrating their capabilities.
Relatives said they now believe the ragtag group’s mission was doomed from the start. They suspect that the plan was compromised and that the boat was ambushed.
Cuba’s Embassy in Washington declined to comment and referred to statements by the country’s Interior Ministry describing the incident. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment.
Despite Cuba’s economic collapse, worsened by an oil embargo recently imposed by the Trump administration, the vast security apparatus of the communist regime has been effective in suppressing dissent on the island. Its General Directorate of Intelligence has long monitored and infiltrated the activities of Cuban exile groups in the U.S.
“We know of plans for terrorist acts that are being supported, financed and prepared in the United States to attack Cuba at a time like this,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in early February. “We will provide the information in due course.”
The incident appeared to catch the Trump administration off guard. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban migrants, arrived in St. Kitts and Nevis at 4 a.m. Wednesday for a summit with Caribbean leaders. He was informed that Cuban authorities had alerted the U.S. Coast Guard about the incident.
“Suffice it to say, it’s highly unusual to see shootouts at open sea like that,” Rubio told reporters traveling with him, adding that U.S. officials were seeking access to the men who had been injured. “We have our Embassy on the ground in Havana working this as we speak.”
The clash comes at a critical juncture for Washington’s tense dealings with Havana, showing how quickly sensitive discussions can be overtaken by unpredictable actors on the margins.
The Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the communist regime by the end of the year. U.S. officials, including Rubio, have quietly been engaging in discussions with Cuban officials and intermediaries.
“The Cuban government is talking with us, they’re in a great deal of trouble, they have no money, no anything,” President Trump said Friday. “Maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover.”
On Thursday, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos de Cossío blamed U.S. inaction for allowing the U.S.-based group to “act with impunity” despite repeated intelligence warnings from Cuba. None of the family members who spoke to The Wall Street Journal said they had been contacted by U.S. law enforcement.
Cuban authorities initially incorrectly identified one of the detainees as Roberto Azcorra Consuegra, a dissident living in the U.S., raising questions about what Cuba’s regime knew about the plot.
Consuegra escaped from a Bahamian prison in 2017 and reached the U.S. He said he often had talks about Cuba with these men at the Versailles restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, a lively venue where Cuban exiles have hatched previous plans to topple the regime while sipping Cuban-style black coffee.
“I’ve been an activist since I was in Cuba,” said Consuegra, referring to Cuba’s state security services. “They know me.”
Consuegra was surprised to learn that the group was confronted in a remote area along small keys just off Cuba’s northern coast. “It’s like the Cuban dictatorship was waiting for them,” he said in an interview.
Consuegra was among a group of supporters who held a vigil in Little Havana in Miami on Thursday for the men who were killed and injured. One man held a sign that said, “INTERVENE NOW. NO DIALOGUE.” Even before details of the incidents were known, some Florida politicians seized on the episode to press Washington to take a harder line against Havana.
Rep. Carlos Giménez (R., Fla.) called the incident a “massacre” and said “the regime in Cuba must be relegated to the dustbin of history.”
The incident has all the characteristics of an intelligence infiltration, said Enrique García, a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. In many cases over the past decades, many Cuban exile activists were unaware that the Cuban regime knew of their plans to kill Fidel Castro or launch armed incursions.
“Many were ambushed, died in combat, or were imprisoned for many years,” he said. That was the case of Alpha 66, the paramilitary group formed by Cuban exiles in the 1960s. Members operated as double agents to sabotage efforts.
García finds it dubious that the group of dissidents were swiftly intercepted in broad daylight by a Cuban border guard vessel in a remote coastal area, especially given Cuba’s acute fuel shortages and the deterioration of Cuba’s military boats.
The date the dissidents departed was significant to the group because it marked the 30th anniversary of the Cuban military’s downing of two civilian airplanes, which killed four Cuban nationals on a humanitarian mission by the U.S. activist group Brothers to the Rescue. It was later revealed that the activist group was infiltrated by Juan Pablo Roque, a Cuban spy who posed as a defector and vanished just before the aircraft shootdown only to emerge in Havana.
Among the dead from the gunfire is Ledián Padrón Guevara, a young man who appears wielding rifles in the video posted on Facebook alongside Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara, who is currently in Cuban custody. Before the mission, the two worked together as delivery-truck drivers in Miami.
Also in custody is Conrado Galindo Sariol, who arrived in Florida with Cuban rafters. Roberto Alvarez Avila, a father of three young daughters, survived the shootout and remains injured on the island. His wife said relatives in northern Cuba still don’t know his situation because they have been without electricity for days, unable to charge their cellphones and talk to family.
“I’m very proud of him,” she said.
