ICE deports Venezuelan official accused of torture. He lived in South Florida

Syra Ortiz Blanes, Miami Herald on Aug 26, 2026

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The Trump administration has deported a former lieutenant colonel in Venezuela’s National Guard who has been accused of torturing political dissenters and spearheading a violent crackdown on protests against the Venezuelan government.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami confirmed on Wednesday that Rafael José Quero Silva had been returned to Venezuela after a judge ordered him deported. ICE had first arrested the Venezuelan national in February 2025.

Five Venezuelans — who supported and participated in mass protests after the death of Hugo Chavez and the election of Nicolas Maduro over a decade ago — sued Quero Silva in Miami federal court in December. They accused him of torturing them or directing his underlings to do so while he was a top official in the Bolivarian National Guard, a military force tasked with internal security.

Quero Silva is the latest target of the federal government’s crackdown on South Florida residents with ties to the Cuban and Venezuelan governments or accused of committing human rights violations in their home countries before immigrating to the United States.

In April 2025, the agency arrested 57-year-old Daniel Morejon Garcia, for failing to disclose he was a government official and a member of Cuba’s communist party. And earlier this year, ICE picked up Adys Lastres Morera, the sister of the official in charge of GAESA, the military conglomerate that runs most of Cuba’s economy.

“ICE officers continue to remove human rights violators to their home countries,” said Miami Field Office Director Matthew Elliston. “We are committed to public safety and national security, and to ensuring the United States does not become a safe haven for individuals who participated in persecution, torture or other serious human rights abuses.”

Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI in Miami were both involved in Quero Silva’s detention and deportation, as was the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center.

Quero Silva arrived in the United States in 2016 at Miami International Airport, but overstayed his visa, according to ICE. The plaintiffs who sued him realized that Quero Silva was in the U.S. when he appeared as an extra in a Spanish-language soap opera in 2018.

The lawsuit claims that Quero Silva, as the top military authority in Barquisimeto, a city in central-western Venezuela, oversaw their torture in the headquarters of the National Guard in the region.

“He used his authority to orchestrate a violent crackdown on political dissent, targeting Venezuelan civilians who protested the contentious election of Nicolás Maduro in 2013 or who opposed the Venezuelan government,” the lawsuit states.

The five Venezuelans filed suit under the Torture Victim Protection Act in December 2025 in Miami. U.S District Judge Michael Moore, a veteran jurist appointed by President George H.W. Bush., is presiding over the case.

Quero Silva filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming that the people accusing him had not properly served him at Krome, that the claims were time-limited, and that they had not pursued remedies under local courts. He asked the court to stay the matter until his release from immigration custody.

His lawyer told the Herald in February that he had “consistently maintained that he had never persecuted anyone and never authorized abuse. To the contrary, when he learned of misconduct, he castigated those responsible and sought to stop it.”

Quero Silva had applied for asylum in the United States, but was found ineligible because he had been a national guard member.

One plaintiff, a green card holder who lives in Chicago, said that he had been shot in the abdomen by officials under Quero Silva, an injury that left him with psychological scars and nerve damage. Another plaintiff, a woman living in Atlanta, says that Quero Silva and a group of his officers arrested her at home after she had sheltered protesters.

She was imprisoned for four months in different facilities, where she was deprived of her medications, forced to stay awake, and convicted of falsified charges, according to the lawsuit. Female guards “used the pretext of searching for drugs to molest her,” the lawsuit states.

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(Miami Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.)