Justice Department Sues to Revoke Citizenship of Convicted Cuban Spy Victor Manuel Rocha

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil denaturalization complaint against Victor Manuel Rocha in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the department said in a release dated May 8, 2026.

Rocha, a native of Colombia who became a naturalized U.S. citizen, was convicted in 2024 of serving as an unregistered agent for the Republic of Cuba from the 1970s until his arrest. The complaint seeks to revoke the citizenship he obtained on the basis that his concealment of that espionage activity constituted fraud in the naturalization process.

The filing directly affects one individual. Rocha, who served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia from 1999 to 2002 and held other State Department and USAID posts, faces potential loss of citizenship and subsequent deportation if the court grants the complaint.

The action changes Rocha’s legal status from convicted felon with retained U.S. citizenship to defendant in an active civil denaturalization suit. No trial date has been set. A final judgment in the government’s favor would cancel Rocha’s naturalization certificate and open the door for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to initiate removal proceedings under standard immigration statutes governing aliens convicted of aggravated felonies.

Downstream, the suit requires Rocha to file an answer in federal district court and could lead to discovery of additional evidence about Cuban intelligence operations inside the United States. A successful judgment would set a precedent cited by the Justice Department in other denaturalization cases involving former intelligence officers who concealed foreign-agent activity during naturalization.

The case also obliges the State Department and intelligence agencies to review any remaining classified materials tied to Rocha’s career for potential declassification or use in parallel enforcement actions.

This is the latest denaturalization complaint brought by the Justice Department against individuals convicted of espionage or acting as agents of foreign powers. Rocha’s 2024 guilty plea in the Southern District of Florida marked the public culmination of a multi-year FBI investigation into Cuban infiltration of U.S. diplomatic ranks.

The department has pursued similar civil actions against naturalized citizens convicted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in recent years.