US citizens among the dead, wounded in Cuba boat shooting, State Department says

At least one of the four people the Cuban government said it killed in an open-water shootout Wednesday is an American citizen, the U.S. State Department confirmed Thursday evening.

Another citizen was injured, a third person involved in the incident was on a visa for fiancés of U.S. citizens and “others may be legal permanent residents,” a spokesperson told the Miami Herald.

The news comes more than a day after the Cuban government said it had killed four people and detained six on a Florida-registered boat after a shootout.

The killing of an American could raise the stakes of an incident that occurred on the backdrop of an escalating humanitarian crisis in Cuba after the U.S. cut off its supply of oil from Venezuela. Rubio’s team has also been having secret talks with Raul Castro’s grandson — including in Saint Kitts and Nevis on the day of the alleged shoot out.

“If in reality the Cuban regime shot at these American residents or U.S. citizens without any type of legal justification, the Cuban regime is in an even more dire, complicated situation than it is right now,” Republican Miami Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar told the Miami Herald Thursday. “The Trump administration is not going to allow this to go unpunished if the Cuban regime did what they usually do, which is shoot first, ask questions later.”

President Donald Trump, however, stayed silent on the matter throughout the day Thursday and the State Department revealed little in the 24 hours after the Cuban government’s announcement — leaving the Cuban government’s narrative as the only public information about the shoot-out, even as U.S. officials say they’re notoriously unreliable.

“How does the president not comment on an international incident like that that happened in the waters between Cuba and the U.S., especially given that there are ongoing negotiations?” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Broward County Democrat, said in an interview. “I don’t understand why they’re leaving the regime’s side of the story in the public sphere.”

In the absence of information about the shootout from U.S. officials, the Cuban Ministry of the Interior issued detailed statements Wednesday and Thursday alleging those aboard “intended to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes,” and said they seized including assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives and body armor from the boat.

The revelations that at least one of those killed was an American is one of the few pieces of information the State Department has publicly revealed since Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday evening, “We will know quickly many more facts about this incident than we know right now.”

The Cuban government identified Michel Ortega Casanova as one of the people killed on Wednesday. His brother told the Associated Press that Casanova was a citizen who had lived in the U.S. for more than two decades.

This story was originally published February 26, 2026 at 5:18 PM.