Jose Daniel Ferrer Didn’t Leave Cuba — He Was Expelled

October 13, 2025

HAVANA TIMES – On October 13, 2025, Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer García flew from Cuba to the United States, accompanied by part of his family. The island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minrex) clarified that Ferrer’s “departure” occurred following “a formal request from the [US] government and the express acceptance of [that request] within the framework of the legal formalities and compliance that exist between the two countries.”

Granma — the official newspaper of the Communist Party’s Central Committee — reported the news claiming that Jose Daniel had “abandoned” the country. The use of the term “abandoned” underscores the Cuban regime’s desired narrative: that an opposition leader went into exile by choice.

However, Ferrer did not go into exile. He wasn’t even given that choice.

Exile vs. Banishment

Exile is a decision. The exiled person leaves their country voluntarily, motivated by a genuine fear of potential state repression.

The exile does not necessarily have to face a direct, material order from authorities to leave their country. Most exiles do not confront the stark choice between continued imprisonment or departure. Still, that does not mean that the repressor’s behavior, their verifiable record, and the need to change one’s life or attitude to be able to stay are not clear catalysts for the decision to go into exile.

Given that reality — and taking into account Ferrer’s words in a letter he managed to send from prison — many Cubans might interpret his acceptance of leaving the country, after years of steadfast refusal, as the leader of the Union Patriótica de Cuba finally deciding to embrace exile.

However, what Ferrer accepted was his banishment.

Banishment, unlike exile, is an imposed or forced expulsion — a political or judicial punishment for dissent. Although the “procedure” in Ferrer’s case was dressed up by officialdom as the result of an “exhaustive evaluation” of his legal situation, it was neither exile nor legal.

Jose Daniel Ferrer joins the list of Cubans recently banished from the island — a list that includes Hamlet Labastida and Esteban Rodriguez, among others. They were taken out of prison only to have their handcuffs removed once they were already on the plane taking them far from Cuba.

The Deal and Its “Legality”

In Ferrer’s case, there was a negotiated departure. The Cuban regime tacitly acknowledged as much, and Ferrer himself had hinted at it in the letter his family published.

For further confirmation, on Monday, October 13, 2025, speaking from Miami before Ferrer’s arrival in the US, his brother Luis Enrique Ferrer (in exile for years) revealed that the US State Department — through negotiations led by Marco Rubio — had sent two representatives to Santiago de Cuba. They informed the Cuban government that they would not leave the country until they were on the same flight as Jose Daniel and his family.

However, this “negotiated” departure — which the Cuban government tries to present as legal and legitimate — is, in reality, the opposite: a maneuver that exposes the illegitimacy and injustice of the imprisonment the opposition leader had endured.

Legality is an empty concept in a system like Cuba’s, which does not operate under the principles of the rule of law. Even so, no legal instrument in Cuba authorizes the State to expel a citizen from the country, much less to use imprisonment as a form of coercion to force or condition someone’s exile.

Beyond that omission, by banishing Ferrer, the regime shows that there was never a valid legal reason to justify the only thing that made him change his mind: prison and his family’s suffering.

In January 2025, Jose Daniel Ferrer was released after nearly four years in prison. Yet in April that same year, the regime revoked the “conditional release” that had justified his freedom. Although he had already served his sentence, they decided to keep him in “provisional detention” based on new, never publicly explained charges and the supposed expectation of a new trial — which, as we now know, they never intended to hold.

The official Foreign Ministry statement claimed that “once the investigation was concluded,” the Prosecutor’s Office “decided to modify the precautionary measure of provisional imprisonment.” This phrasing allowed them, at least superficially, to frame the operation as a “lawful” procedure. That rhetoric, however, does not legitimize it.

These details reveal that by October 2025, Jose Daniel Ferrer remained imprisoned — the key factor in his “decision” to leave — for crimes that never actually existed.

There were never legal grounds for his imprisonment. While the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office can modify the precautionary measures applied to someone under criminal investigation, that discretion is not absolute: it carries specific obligations.

Article 356.1 of Cuba’s Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that provisional imprisonment is an exceptional measure, only permissible when there are well-founded reasons to suspect a person’s criminal responsibility, provided the acts are serious or there is a risk that the accused might evade justice or obstruct the investigation, trial, or enforcement of a sentence.

Moreover, the modification of a precautionary measure never allows an accused person to leave the country voluntarily. Under Cuban law, even someone not in provisional detention but still under investigation can be barred from leaving the country to prevent them from evading justice.

Therefore, the only legal way that could have allowed Ferrer to go straight from Mar Verde prison onto a plane bound for the US would have been if, after the supposed “exhaustive evaluation,” the Prosecutor’s Office had concluded there were no signs of criminal responsibility and consequently dismissed the charges keeping him in “provisional detention.”

If one accepts the official version — that Ferrer’s detention measure was modified to allow him to leave the country at the request of the US government — one must also accept that the Cuban administration is incapable of enforcing its own laws or administering justice.

And if that sounds too technical, consider this simpler question: What kind of state governed by the rule of law releases an alleged criminal just because its political adversary asks it to?

There is no interpretation of Ferrer’s banishment that favors the Cuban regime.

Rejecting the notion of incompetence or naïveté — as any non-fanatical person would — leaves only one conclusion: Cuba is ruled by a despotic regime that manipulates the law at will to punish dissent.

Ferrer’s release, conditioned on his departure from the country, is the clearest proof that there were never “sufficient grounds” — as Cuban law requires — to consider him guilty of any crime.

It is now evident that José Daniel Ferrer was not imprisoned to be tried again, but to be banished. The regime used his “provisional detention” as political blackmail to achieve what it had failed to do for years: force Ferrer to leave Cuba.

For that reason, it cannot be said that Jose Daniel Ferrer went into exile.

Recently, for instance, Luis Robles went into exile after completing his sentence. Refusing to moderate his criticism of the government, he chose to move voluntarily to Spain with his mother and son to avoid future reprisals.

Jose Daniel, on the other hand, was taken from his cell only to be placed on a plane — with the full knowledge that once he set foot outside Cuba, he would never be allowed to return. At least, not as long as the current regime continues to use prison and banishment as tools to eliminate dissent and preserve power unchallenged.

That is another essential difference between exile and banishment. The exile, in many cases, can return, because what separates them from their homeland is their own will or a fear they might someday overcome.

The banished, however, cannot return by ordinary means, even if they conquer their fears or find the resources to do so; because as long as the status quo endures, their return remains materially impossible. The stories of Karla M. Perez, Anamely Ramos, and Omara Ruiz Urquiola remind us of that.

Jose Daniel did not abandon Cuba. Jose Daniel was expelled from his homeland.

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First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.