“When the Border Guard units ordered the speedboat’s crew to halt, the traffickers responded with a defiant attitude and aggressive actions, including violent charges against one of the Border Troop crafts, which suffered multiple damages and was in danger of flipping over, endangering the lives of its combatants, who were maneuvering in conditions of darkness and poor visibility,” the Cuban daily Granma reported April 6.

In response, Cuban officers fired shots at the intruders. Two injured crew members were evacuated to a provincial hospital in Cuba where “in spite of doctors’ efforts, the most seriously injured person died in the afternoon,” Granma said.

Two of those captured on the speedboat were Cuban-born U.S. citizens. Passports they carried identified them as Rafael Mesa Farinas and Rosendo Salgado Castro. The third individual, who died later, did not carry documents and has not yet been identified.

A background check of the seized boat indicates it belongs to a Cuban-born U.S. citizen named John Roberto, who calls himself the “Blue Shark.” The vessel has been involved in numerous smuggling incidents aimed at taking Cubans to Mexico for eventual entry into the United States. The 39 people waiting to board the boat—20 men, 12 women, and 7 children—were questioned by Cuban authorities, and some of them were sent to their homes, Granma said.

The incident “confirms the irresponsible, criminal, and aggressive nature of the U.S. government toward Cuba, particularly the deliberate use of the migration issue against the Revolution,” through laws like the Cuban Adjustment Act, Granma noted. This law, enacted in 1966, grants virtually automatic asylum and expedited residency to any Cuban who sets foot upon U.S. territory, regardless of crimes they may have committed to get there.

Seizing on this incident, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, “If you have an American citizen who’s been shot and killed, I think that that is a deeply disturbing matter, and we would be very concerned about that.”  
 
 
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