Federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke the U.S. citizenship of former Ambassador Manuel Rocha in a Miami civil denaturalization case, the Justice Department said through filings made in federal court. The effort comes as Rocha, 75, remains imprisoned after he pleaded guilty and admitted he worked for Cuba as a secret agent dating back decades. Prosecutors contend the legal basis for stripping citizenship is not the espionage conduct itself, but what they say were false statements made during the naturalization process.

According to the complaint, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami filed the action to “complete the job” of taking away the citizenship Rocha obtained after moving to New York City as a child. Prosecutors said federal law places a high burden on the government in denaturalization cases, requiring evidence that the person either obtained citizenship illegally or procured naturalization through “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.”

Rocha’s case stems from his conviction after a late-2023 arrest. The government said Rocha later received a 15-year federal prison sentence after admitting he served for decades as a secret agent for communist Cuba. The government also said an undercover FBI recording captured Rocha praising Fidel Castro as “El Comandante” and describing his work for Cuba’s communist government as “more than a grand slam” against the U.S. “enemy.”

Prosecutors said the citizenship application process in 1978 included the statements they now cite as grounds for denaturalization. In court filings, prosecutors alleged Rocha lied under oath when he said he “believed in the U.S. Constitution” and when he denied having any affiliation with the Communist Party of Cuba. The filings frame the denaturalization as a separate civil proceeding from Rocha’s underlying criminal case.

In addition to the naturalization allegations, prosecutors said the record supports an earlier connection between Rocha and Cuban intelligence. The complaint said Rocha acknowledged that he first connected with Cuban intelligence agents in 1973 while participating in a student program in Chile at the end of socialist President Salvador Allende’s rule. Prosecutors said that, at Havana’s direction, Rocha enrolled in master’s programs at Harvard and Georgetown before joining the U.S. State Department.

U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida said in a statement that the case is about finishing the work of dismantling what he called one of the most prolific Cuban spies uncovered in the United States. He described the denaturalization action as “about finishing the job,” after asserting that prosecutors helped take down the “prolific Cuban” intelligence source.

The filings describe the denaturalization case in the context of shifting Justice Department priorities. The government said the Justice Department has increased its focus on denaturalization in recent years, including by emphasizing cases involving potential national security danger. The complaint also noted that the Trump administration this week moved to denaturalize 11 other people accused of crimes, while also adding that denaturalization was used in only about a dozen cases per year between 1990 and 2017.

The Associated Press investigation referenced in the cluster said the earlier criminal case involved warnings that were not pursued as fully as officials later determined they should have been. The reporting described a warning received about two decades earlier involving a longtime CIA operative and also said separate intelligence revealed that officials had been aware as early as 1987 that Fidel Castro had a “super mole” within the U.S. government, with some officials suspected it could have been Rocha.

Over the past two years, the cluster said, the FBI, the U.S. State Department and the CIA have worked to identify what Rocha may have provided to Cuba. The reporting said Rocha spent the first months of his imprisonment being debriefed by federal officials, though it was not clear what new information those sessions produced. Prosecutors’ denaturalization complaint seeks a court outcome that would strip him of the citizenship they say he should not have been granted.

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