ICE Arrests Gaesa Executive’s Sister in Miami
U.S. immigration authorities arrested Adys Lastres Morera in Miami on Thursday, and ICE said the permanent U.S. resident has been detained pending deportation. The arrest puts gaesa back at the center of Washington’s campaign against figures tied to Cuba’s state-linked business network.
ICE said Lastres Morera is the sister of Ania Guillermina Lastres Morena, whom the agency described as responsible for managing GAESA’s illicit assets abroad. U.S. authorities describe GAESA as “un Estado dentro del Estado,” and estimate that it controls 70% of Cuban government assets worth about 20,000 million dollars.
ICE and Marco Rubio
ICE said Lastres Morera had lived in the United States since 2023 and had not applied for U.S. citizenship. John Condon said her presence in the United States could have “graves consecuencias adversas para la política exterior,” while Marco Rubio said he had revoked her permanent residence.
Rubio also said Lastres Morera “administraba activos inmobiliarios” and “ayudaba al régimen comunista de La Habana.” In a social-media post, Rubio added: “No habrá ningún lugar en la Tierra —y mucho menos en nuestro país— donde los ciudadanos extranjeros que amenacen nuestra seguridad nacional puedan vivir con lujos.”
GAESA’s Reach in Cuba
GAESA is controlled by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces and its portfolio includes hotels, telecommunications, retail companies, gas stations, and the state banking system that manages all of Cuba’s international transactions. Its best-known subsidiaries include Gaviota, CIMEX, and TRD, and it also controls remittances, free-trade zones, and real estate projects.
U.S. authorities estimate that GAESA functions like a state inside the Cuban state, a scale that has made it a recurring target of sanctions on the conglomerate and the officials who run it. The arrest of Lastres Morera extends that pressure from the company structure to a family member who held legal resident status in the United States.
Raúl Castro Charges
The move also lands days after the U.S. Department of Justice charged Raúl Castro on Wednesday, May 20, with murder and other crimes tied to the 1996 shootdown of two aircraft from Hermanos al Rescate, in which four people died. GAESA was previously run for years by Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, who died in 2022, giving the network a leadership history that still shapes Washington’s approach.
Lastres Morera will remain detained until she is deported, and that makes her case a direct test of how far U.S. immigration authorities are willing to go against people linked to Cuba’s economic power structure. The next step is her removal process, which now sits with ICE after the arrest in Miami.
