Caribbean leaders oppose US policy targeting Cuban medical missions, saying they’re critical: Heads of state from throughout the Caribbean are pushing back on a U.S. policy to revoke the visas of foreign leaders determined to be contracting Cuban medical services, with many, including the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, saying they’d prefer to lose their U.S. visa before dropping medical cooperation with Cuba. Guyana’s Foreign Minister Hugh Todd told AP that foreign ministers from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) recently met in Washington with State Department Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone to express their disagreement with the measure and express the importance of the Cuban medical personnel’s work in sustaining health systems across the region. Guyana’s president, Dr. Irfaan Ali, said that he is confident his country is working in strict conformity with all local and international labor laws, contradicting allegations made about the brigades by State Department officials and reports. https://apnews.com/article/cuban-medical-missions-caribbean-50d1c8eefb14ceee1caf983e9a8e4edb#

Trump administration yet to talk to Cuba over migration, vice foreign minister says: Cuba’s Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told Reuters that the Trump administration has yet to reach out to Cuban authorities to discuss migration, even as the U.S. moves forward with a mass immigration crackdown that could affect hundreds of thousands of Cubans in the U.S. Under existing migratory accords dating back to the 1980s, Cuba regularly accepts Cuban deportees by land and sea, “but large scale deportations of Cubans initially admitted lawfully into the United States were never contemplated in the migratory accords between the two countries,” Cossio said. Cuba argues that the U.S. stokes mass migration by pummeling its economy with sanctions while also incentivizing Cubans to migrate through laws offering them an expedited path to permanent residency. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/trump-administration-yet-talk-cuba-over-migration-foreign-vice-minister-says-2025-03-12/

Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting shuttered following Trump executive order: A Trump administration executive order last week led to the closure of the federally-funded U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent company of the Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which received an appropriation of at least $20 million last year to operate Radio Martí and the online platform Martí Noticias. Past U.S. government audits have questioned OCB’s effectiveness and professional standards, while the Trump official tapped to lead the Voice of America, Kari Lake, called it “giant rot and a burden to the U.S. taxpayer,” seemingly in agreement with Cuban state media, which called it “digital sludge.” South Florida Republican Members of Congress Maria Elvira Salazar and Mario Díaz-Balart said, in response, that they will “work with President Trump to make sure the Cuban people have the access to the uncensored news they deserve” and that “this is not the end of the world.” Díaz-Balart, the vice chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, had sought to increase funding to $35 million in the FY2025 for OCB, whose programs have now gone off-air for the first time since the broadcaster was founded under the Reagan administration. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-cheers-collapse-us-funded-media-following-trump-cuts-2025-03-19/

ICE returns all migrants from Guantanamo to stateside facilities: The New York Times reports that, despite hopes from President Trump to hold up to 30,000 migrants at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, all migrants that had been temporarily held there have now been returned to mainland U.S. detention centers, marking the second-time the administration has completely cleared out the facility in a costly and time-consuming exercise. The move happened soon before a federal judge heard a challenge to major aspects of the administration’s use of the migrant operations center to house migrants, some of whom described strip searches, the use of restraint chairs and lack of access to legal counsel. The operation has so far cost the government $16 million and involved a staff of nearly 1,000 security forces and civilian contractors, according to the Department of Defense and Members of Congress who were briefed prior to visiting the detention facility on a congressional delegation. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/us/politics/ice-migrants-guantanamo.html

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who put Cuban embargo into law, dies at 70: The legislative mastermind responsible for codifying the U.S. embargo – once revocable through executive action – into law, died in Miami at the age of 70. Former Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart (R-FL), who served from 1993 to 2011, is the older brother of the dean of Florida’s Congressional delegation, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), and “played a critical role in the political reorientation of Cuban Americans away from the Democratic Party to the GOP, where they continue to exercise outsized political influence on local, state and national politics and policy,” according to Marc Caputo of Axios. The Helms-Burton (LIBERATD) Act, which Díaz-Balart helped draft together with then-Rep. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and the exile organization CANF, the Cuban American National Foundation, was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 and constitutes the legal underpinnings for much of current U.S. policy toward Cuba. https://www.axios.com/2025/03/03/lincoln-diaz-balart-cuba-embargo

Trump administration reinstates some Cuba democracy programs but turns off Radio Martí: The State Department has reversed its decision to cut off funding for certain Cuban exile organizations providing aid to evangelical churches, prisoners and dissident journalists on the island. Miami-based Cubanet, Outreach Aid to the Americas and the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, along with Washington-based Cubalex, told the Miami Herald that some, but not all, of their U.S. federal funding has been restored through the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. In FY2024, $25 million was appropriated from the U.S. Congress to organizations claiming to support democracy, human rights and freedom of expression on the island, yet following the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the temporary freezing of accounts at the National Endowment of Democracy, many of these organizations were forced to furlough staff and halt programming. ACERE has learned that the restoration of some of the funding to a few organizations follows tense meetings in Washington and pressure from certain Members of Congress who had sought to boost, not slash, funds to these organizations, despite past investigations from the Government Accountability Office finding misuse of funds, limited oversight and few tangible results. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article302377354.html

Cuba reports arrival of 104 migrants from US in first official announcement since Trump: Cuba announced in late February the arrival of 104 returned migrants from the United States, the first official recognition of a deportation flight to the island under the second Trump administration. In a brief communiqué, authorities also mentioned another deportation flight from the U.S. on January 23, just days after Trump’s inauguration, without mentioning the number of migrants returned. According to the official announcement, Cuba has received so far in 2025 at least 11 repatriation flights from different countries in the region – likely Mexico and the Bahamas – totaling nearly 300 returned individuals. https://es-us.noticias.yahoo.com/cuba-reporta-arribo-104-migrantes-033704274.html

US hardens visa sanctions over Cuba medical program: In late February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions for Cuban and other foreign government officials involved in Cuba’s international medical missions, citing accusations of exploitation and forced labor. Tens of thousands of Cuban medical professionals are currently working in over 50 countries, bringing in a major source of hard currency to the heavily sanctioned island’s economy. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla responded by saying the announcement was “based on lies” and will “affect health services for millions of people in Cuba and around the world,” alleging that “once again, Marco Rubio is placing his personal interests above those of the United States,” in reference to the numerous U.S. allies contracting Cuban medical services. Read the July 2024 ACERE statement about Cuba’s medical missions here. https://www.barrons.com/news/us-hardens-visa-sanctions-over-cuba-medical-program-5cdf67aa

US suspends several visa categories for Cuban public sector employees: AP reports that in late February the U.S. Embassy in Havana denied dozens of visas for members of Cuba’s national basketball team slated to play in a qualifying match at an International Basketball Federation (FIBA) tournament in Puerto Rico. Cuban authorities reported that U.S. consular officers told them that all visa processing for employees of Cuban public sector entities had been suspended, jeopardizing decades-long bilateral exchanges in healthcare, culture, education, science and sports. https://apnews.com/article/cuba-eeuu-visados-pasaportes-migrantes-0a2a7704a8b788564781131fe5038e7e

Florida Sen. Rick Scott pushes for tougher sanctions, travel restrictions on Cuba: Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) told CBS News that he would be introducing measures by the end of the year to restrict all travel from the United States to Cuba. “I don’t think we should have any travel to Cuba,” Scott said. “If you want to move back to Cuba, move back to Cuba. But it doesn’t help the people of Cuba—it helps the regime oppress them.” Cuban-American travelers at Miami International Airport, such as Orestes Pedraza, pushed back on Senator Scott’s claims, saying, “it wouldn’t be the best for a lot of people…I don’t want anything bad to happen to our families in Cuba.” In February, Scott re-introduced the DEMOCRACIA Act, which would impose draconian sanctions on broad swaths of Cuban and third-country nationals doing business on the island. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-senator-rick-scott-pushes-for-tougher-sanctions-travel-restrictions-on-cuba/

Beneficiaries of humanitarian parole could lose their legal status and be deported from the United States: A top Trump official confirmed to Reuters that, as soon as this month, upward of 530,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals paroled into the United States under the Biden administration could face expedited deportation proceedings, despite being invited into the country and previously screened by federal agencies. While many of the 110,000 Cuban beneficiaries of the CHNV humanitarian parole program have already adjusted their immigration status under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, many who have been legally living and working in the U.S. for less than a year have not yet been able to do so, and may risk being returned to the island. Reports have already emerged of dozens of Cubans in South Florida with a different immigration status – an order of release on recognizance (I-220A) – being rounded up by ICE agents and held in detention facilities before having their cases heard by immigration authorities. https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba-usa/beneficiaries-of-humanitarian-parole-could-lose-their-legal-status-and-be-deported-from-the-united-states/