MIAMI — The United States deported a former judge who sentenced anti-government protesters in Cuba, in a case that became a test of efforts by Cuban exiles to “out” former officials accused of human rights violations who have taken refuge in the United States.

Melody González Pedraza was put on a deportation flight to Cuba last Thursday, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Miami Herald.

González Pedraza arrived in Tampa in May under a humanitarian parole program created by the Biden administration last year but was denied entry at the airport because of her role in Cuba as judge in Villa Clara, a province in central Cuba. She then claimed asylum on the spot, but an immigration judge denied her the protection in May. She had been detained under ICE custody during the entire process.

“ICE removed Melody Gonzalez Pedraza, a citizen of Cuba, from the United States to Cuba Sep. 25 via an ICE Air Operations flight departing from Alexandria, Louisiana,” the spokesperson said, confirming reports that she was on that flight. “She was given a final order of removal May 30, 2024. Gonzalez Pedraza was found inadmissible due to her affiliation with the Cuban Communist Party while serving as a judge.”

In a statement. Cuba’s Ministry of Interior said 136 Cubans – 125 men and 11 woman – arrived in the flight. It was the ninth deportation flight this year. So far, 999 Cubans have been deported from the U.S., the Ministry said.

Just before leaving Cuba in April, González Pedraza had sentenced four young men who protested against the government in Encrucijada, a municipality in Villa Clara, in November 2022, to up to 4 years in prison. Soon after her arrival in the United States, relatives of the young men, who are still in prison, criticized Pedraza and called on U.S. authorities to deny her asylum petition.

In a June interview from Broward Transitional Center, a migrants’ detention facility, González Pedraza told the Spain-based news site Diario de Cuba that she was pressured by judicial authorities and later by two state agents who visited her at her home, to sent the men to prison even though she said the evidence in the case was flimsy. The men were accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a jeep and the homes of senior police and state security officials in Encrucijada, according to a report by Martinoticias.

The protesters she sent to prison tried to use her statements to appeal the sentence in Cuba, but Cuban authorities denied their petition.

Her case received much attention in Miami, where Cuban exiles and politicians have been sounding the alarm about former government officials and members of the Cuban security services who they say have abused the immigration system to move to the United States amid a large migration wave in recent years.

Pedraza was included in a list compiled by the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba of former high-ranking officials in the Communist Party, members of the feared Cuban Interior Ministry, police officers, judges and others accused of repressing dissidents on the island. Last year, the organization said it had identified over a hundred who were living in the United States.

In March, Miami U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez shared over a hundred names with the Department of Homeland Security, urging the agency to deport them. The agency has already taken action in a few cases.

Daniel Morejón García, a former Ministry of Interior agent accused of repressing July 11 protesters in 2021 was deported to Cuba in July.

In August, Homeland Security Investigations arrested Jorge Luis Vega García, a former Ministry of Interior lieutenant colonel who had been accused of torture by former political prisoners. He had also arrived in Tampa with a humanitarian parole in January. A judge has ordered his deportation.

Tomas Emilio Hernández Cruz, 71, a former high-ranking official in the Cuban intelligence service, was arrested by ICE and the FBI in Broward in March. The agencies said he made fraudulent claims on his immigration application for a green card and is awaiting deportation.

It is unclear whether González Pedraza will face retaliation for her comments to media outlets and during her asylum hearing disparaging the Cuban government and its judicial system.

The Ministry of Interior said that four people had been detained at arrival because they were suspects in crimes committed before they had emigrated.

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