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Miami Drug Kingpin, 'Cocaine Cowboy' Willie Falcon, Faces Deportation

Confiscated bags containing cocaine are displayed. (Mark Renders/Getty Images)
Confiscated bags containing cocaine are displayed. (Mark Renders/Getty Images)

Willie Falcon was one of Miami’s most powerful drug kingpins in Miami in the ’80s. He served a nearly 20-year prison sentence for money laundering, and when he got out last year, authorities nabbed him for deportation because he is not a U.S. citizen. Now there’s a fight over whether to deport him, and his lawyers argue that sending him back to his native Cuba would result in his death. They say Falcon helped fund a covert CIA operation aimed at assassinating Fidel Castro in the ’90s.

Here & Now’s Robin Young speaks with Roben Farzad (@robenfarzad), host of “Full Disclosure” on NPR One and author of “Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami.”

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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