ACERE firmly opposes the recent decision by the U.S. State Department to impose visa restrictions on current and former officials from Africa, Brazil, Grenada and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) involved in Cuba’s international medical missions. This decision, announced on August 13, falsely and damagingly labels these life-saving missions a “coercive forced labor export scheme,” which is not only inaccurate but actively undermines global health equity, South-South cooperation, and the sovereign right of nations to determine their own public health partnerships.
In late February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. would be issuing visa restrictions on foreign officials determined to be contracting Cuban medical personnel, stemming from a provision in the FY24 State Department funding bill, authored by Cuban-American Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), that authorizes sanctions on foreign officials involved in these missions . Since then, visa restrictions have been issued against officials from Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras and some Caribbean countries, whose officials have been engaged in talks for months with their U.S. counterparts to avoid the visa revocations and in some cases alter the terms of their contracts with Cuba’s medical services company.
The escalatory step to impose visa revocations and restrictions on officials from Brazil and an unnamed African country, as well former officials of a specialized UN agency based Washington D.C., sets a dangerous precedent where the U.S. penalizes its own partners for exercising their sovereign right to address their public health needs. This move has been met with firm rejection from regional leaders, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and CARICOM heads of state, who have recognized the vital role Cuban medical teams have played in their own healthcare systems for decades.
Since the early 1960s, Cuban medical brigades have served in regions devastated by natural disasters, epidemics, and a chronic lack of medical infrastructure. They have provided care in remote villages and overcrowded urban slums from Haiti to Pakistan, Angola to Brazil—often where no other help is available. Their work has been crucial in fighting diseases like HIV/AIDS, cholera, and Ebola, and in establishing primary healthcare systems in developing countries. In fact, the U.S. and Cuba have worked together in response to health crises like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, with Cuban medical personnel collaborating alongside U.S. aid and resources, earning praise from top U.S. officials.
The State Department’s claim that these programs enrich Cuba’s “regime slave masters” not only conceals the legacy of the United States’ own bloody history of slavery but also ignores the voices of the thousands of participating Cuban medical professionals. These doctors, nurses, and technicians volunteer to serve on missions, earn more money than they do in Cuba, and in many cases are motivated by a profound commitment to providing care to the world’s most vulnerable populations, a principle embedded in Cuba’s medical education.
To equate this altruistic service, which has saved millions of lives across the globe for decades, with exploitative labor disregards the agency and dedication of the health professionals themselves, who often work in challenging conditions out of choice and a shared humanitarian purpose. Punishing officials who facilitate this critical work directly harms the recipient communities, constituting a policy that prioritizes a skewed geopolitical narrative over the health and well-being of the global poor.
The U.S. State Department also mischaracterizes the financial structure of these missions. The revenue generated from agreements with partner governments—a portion of which is used to compensate the doctors and their families—is a legitimate source of revenue that directly subsidizes Cuba’s free medical education and its universal healthcare system, which serves all 10 million Cuban citizens without cost. This model allows Cuba to maintain its free public health services despite ongoing shortages stemming in part from the six-decade-long economic embargo. To frame this cooperation as exploitation is to willfully ignore the economic reality Cuba faces as well as deceitfully mischaracterize the legitimate mechanism through which Cuba sustains its domestic programs while contributing to the global good.
ACERE urges the Trump administration to immediately rescind the visa restrictions imposed on governmental officials from nations benefiting from Cuba’s medical missions program, as well as revoke the unjust sanctions placed on Brazilian officials formerly involved in bringing Cuban doctors to remote and underserved areas in Brazil. Likewise, ACERE encourages the State Department to cease the false and damaging rhetoric that mislabels humanitarian cooperation as forced labor, and to recognize the right of all nations to engage in South-South cooperation and address their public health crises with the partners of their choosing.
