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A Cuban national convicted of hijacking an airplane in the wake of 9/11 has been ordered released in Florida despite a standing order for his removal from the U.S.
Maikel Guerra Morales and several others assaulted a flight crew and hijacked a Cuban commuter airplane in 2003 and forced it to fly more than 100 miles north to Monroe County, Florida, where it eventually landed at Key West International Airport.
Morales was arrested that evening after U.S. Air Force jets scrambled from Homestead to intercept the plane, which originally took off from Nuevo Gerona on Cuba’s Isle of Youth.
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A courtroom gavel, left, is seen with an inset of Maikel Guerra Morales, right. (iStock; DHS)
Since then, he has been in U.S. custody, including for a 22-year sentence for “aircraft piracy.”
A federal immigration judge issued an order of removal against Morales in 2023, and he ultimately was transferred to ICE custody after completing his prison sentence in 2025.
But, Clinton-appointed Judge John Steele in Fort Myers ruled last week that Morales must be released, citing a Supreme Court ruling involving foreign nationals languishing in custody with no country to take them back.
DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis called Morales’ case “yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s mandate from the American people to remove criminal illegal aliens from our country.”
“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS will continue to fight for the detention and removal of criminal illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country,” Bis said in a statement.
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Cuban President Fidel Castro, center, greets passengers and crew who were aboard a Cuban plane hijacked and flown to Florida. (Pablo Pildain/Getty Images)
Steele wrote that federal officials indicated their intention to deport him to Mexico, but instead found that there is no evidence of a “a significant likelihood that Guerra Morales will be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
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“Therefore, he is entitled to release from detention under ‘Zadvydas’, but he remains subject to the terms of an order of supervision,” Steele wrote – relying on the case of Kestutis Zadvydas, an ethnic Lithuanian lawful permanent U.S. resident born in a German displaced-persons camp who had been ordered deported in 1994 due to a criminal record but had no receptive country to return to.
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Cuba lies 90 miles south of the Southernmost Point in the Continental United States, as marked by this buoy at the foot of Whitehead Street in Key West, Florida. (compassandcamera/iStock)
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An Associated Press report following the hijackers’ 2003 arrests in Key West said Cuban officials demanded the U.S. return the plane and all occupants, including those charged with piracy. Morales and the other suspects claimed at the time they hijacked the plane “for freedom.”