The federal indictment against Raúl Castro for the 1996 shooting down of two planes from the Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue, scheduled for this Wednesday, has brought to the forefront the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones. The son of Cuban refugees now oversees one of the most symbolic investigations for the Miami exile and, perhaps, the most consequential in the turbulent history of relations between Washington and Havana.
Born and raised in Miami, 44-year-old Reding Quiñones embodies a generation of officials marked by anti-Castro politics and the rise of Trumpism in Florida, and his rise reflects the growing alignment between Donald Trump’s political priorities and the judicial apparatus. Former prosecutors and former U.S. Department of Justice officials cited by The Washington Post argue that his appointment is part of President Trump’s effort to place ideological allies willing to push investigations considered a priority for the White House in key prosecutors’ offices around the country.
A law graduate from Florida International University (FIU), Reding Quiñones made a career in the Army and Air Force — where he reached the rank of reservist colonel — before entering the judicial system. He began publicly using his maternal surname Quiñones when he ran for state judge in 2023, to honor his mother, a Cuban political refugee, CNN reported at the time. And last year, he was the first federal prosecutor appointed by Trump, assigned to the Southern District of Florida, at the political epicenter of the Cuban exile and one of the most influential jurisdictions in the country on issues related to Latin America and immigration.
Before being appointed by the Republican, Reding Quiñones had worked as a state judge in Miami and as a mid-level federal prosecutor in the same office he now leads. According to national press reports, his career within the Department of Justice had not particularly stood out and he was not initially among the favorites to head the Miami prosecutor’s office.
Still, after his nomination, in the summer of 2025 he became the first federal prosecutor confirmed by the Senate in Trump’s second term when he was sworn into office in Washington alongside then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a ceremony some saw as a sign of his political closeness to the new Administration. Trump introduced him as a prosecutor who would help “restore law and order” and “make America safe again.” For his part, Reding Quiñones promised to advance the Administration’s priorities, including tightening immigration policy.
His rise occurred as part of the broader reorganization driven by Trump, who has placed ideological allies in key positions within the FBI and the Department of Justice, including figures close to the president such as Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi, and Emil Bove. Along the same lines, since taking office last August, the Miami federal office has played an increasingly visible role in investigations reflecting the political priorities of the Trump Administration, including probes against former officials perceived as adversaries of the president.
One of the most delicate and high-profile cases has been that of former CIA director John Brennan, one of Trump’s most prominent critics and a central figure in investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. The case against Brennan has generated controversy within the Department of Justice itself, where resignations and departures of career prosecutors have been recorded amid pressures to advance these investigations aligned with White House priorities. In the Eastern District of Virginia, for example, several prosecutors were removed in January following pressures to prosecute former FBI director James Comey. Since then, a process against Comey, one of the president’s most prominent public enemies, has been reopened.
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The Department of Justice’s actions have coincided with the hardening of rhetoric toward Cuba by the Trump Government. Accordingly, from Miami, Reding Quiñones’s office has been exploring possible charges and other judicial mechanisms against Cuban leaders and figures linked to the regime. The highest-profile case is that of Raúl Castro, leaked to the press last Thursday, following the unprecedented meeting of CIA director John Ratcliffe in Havana with a Cuban delegation composed of Raúl Rodríguez Castro, El Cangrejo, Raúl Castro’s grandson and trusted man, as well as the Cuban Interior Minister, Lázaro Álvarez Casas, and the head of Cuban intelligence services.
The possible case against 94-year-old Castro, expected to be announced on May 20, Cuba’s Independence Day, dates back to events that occurred three decades ago. On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes searching for rafters in the Florida Straits. The attack, in which four men died — Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales — is considered one of the most traumatic episodes for the Cuban community in South Florida and heightened tensions between Washington and Havana, serving as the definitive catalyst for the Helms-Burton Act, passed weeks later.
Last February, precisely when the 30th anniversary of the shootdown was marked, Republican lawmakers from Miami, activists, and exile figures pressured the Department of Justice to file charges against Raúl Castro. The congressmen cited new evidence, including recordings originally released by the Miami newspaper Nuevo Herald, indicating that the then Cuban Armed Forces minister had directly participated in the decision to shoot down the aircraft.
James Uthmeier, Florida’s attorney general and a close ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, announced in March that the federal investigation was progressing. “When there are grievances against Florida citizens, both under state and federal laws, those responsible must be held accountable,” he said at the time.
Although Uthmeier and Reding Quiñones hold different positions — one state and the other federal — their trajectories and agendas seem increasingly aligned within Florida’s conservative ecosystem under Trump and DeSantis. In February, both prosecutors participated in Miami in the launch of a new Public Integrity Unit, a special division to investigate corruption, abuse of power, and ethical violations by public officials, in an uncommon image of coordination between the state judicial apparatus and the federal Department of Justice on shared priorities. Even more unusual when the target is a historical figure of a foreign government.
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