Dear Fellow Patriots,
I remember the day like it was yesterday. February 24, 1996. I was a young governmental affairs attorney right here in Miami, sitting in my office when the phones started ringing off the hook. Friends and clients in Little Havana were in tears. Two unarmed Cessna planes from Brothers to the Rescue had been blown out of the sky over international waters. Four brave men—Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales—murdered in cold blood. Three were U.S. citizens. All were heroes scanning the Florida Straits for rafters fleeing Castro’s tyranny.
That afternoon, I drove straight to Versailles Restaurant on Calle Ocho. The place was packed, but nobody was eating. Cuban flags waved, people hugged, and the air was thick with grief and rage. I stood there with fellow Miamians—exiles who had lost everything to the regime—listening as they recounted how the Brothers had saved their own relatives just months earlier. For those of us who live and breathe South Florida politics, that massacre wasn’t some distant headline. It was personal. It still is.
Thirty years later, justice is finally moving. As first reported by USA Today, the Department of Justice is preparing a federal indictment against 94-year-old Raúl Castro for his direct role in ordering the shootdown. As Cuba’s defense minister at the time, he oversaw the military that pulled the trigger. No more impunity.
This is classic Trump—decisive, strategic, and rooted in the same peace-through-strength doctrine I chronicled in my book. After the successful January operation that brought Nicolás Maduro to justice, Venezuela cut its subsidized oil lifeline to Havana. Cuba’s energy minister just admitted the island has “absolutely no fuel.” Blackouts now last 20 hours a day. Just last week, a longtime client of mine—a successful Miami entrepreneur whose elderly mother still lives in Havana—called me in tears. “Jorge,” he said, “she’s sitting in the dark again, no medicine, no fan. The regime is finished.” I hear stories like that every day from the Cuban-American community I’ve served for three decades.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio—Miami’s favorite son and longtime champion of this fight—has been instrumental. I’ve known Marco for years; his unwavering advocacy, from the Senate to Foggy Bottom, helped build the legal and diplomatic scaffolding now being deployed. As an attorney who has advised on everything from local elections to federal policy here in Miami, I can tell you this isn’t theater. It’s the wartime president applying Maduro-style leverage: an indictment that strips away the last fig leaf of legitimacy while keeping all options on the table.
Intellectually, the case is airtight. The planes were in international airspace. The International Civil Aviation Organization condemned the attack. Congress found the Brothers posed “no threat whatsoever.” Raúl Castro’s fingerprints were on the operation from the start. Yet for three decades, Washington looked the other way—until now.
Critics will call this escalation. I call it accountability. The Castros hosted Russian listening posts, sheltered spies, and kept their people in chains while American presidents offered carrots and received only contempt. Trump’s approach is different: pair economic precision strikes with legal accountability. The result? A geriatric regime running on empty and a Cuban people finally seeing that America stands with them.
Five quick takeaways as we watch this unfold from the streets of Miami:
- Justice delayed is justice delivered. The families of those four pilots—and the entire exile community—have waited long enough.
- Targeted pressure works. Cutting the Venezuelan oil subsidy exposed Havana’s fragility in weeks.
- No more sacred cows. Even aging revolutionary icons are now answerable under American law.
- Hemisphere security first. Removing Russian and Chinese footholds in Cuba protects our southern flank.
- Leadership matters. Weakness invited 60 years of tyranny; strength is rewriting the rules.
As we approach May 20—Cuban Independence Day—I have a strong feeling the Trump administration has one more strategic card to play. Walking through Little Havana these past few days, you can feel the electricity in the air. Something big may be coming that could finally break the regime’s grip and deliver the freedom the Cuban people have earned.
The era of appeasement is over. History is being written in real time—right here in Miami.
Jorge Luis Lopez, Esq.
Miami, Florida