DHS ends parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans: NBC News reports that the Department of Homeland Security has terminated a humanitarian parole program for vetted Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans that allowed them to live and work legally in the U.S. for two years, saying parolees have been encouraged to self-deport immediately. The announcement could impact around half-a-million people, including over 100,000 Cuban nationals who entered the U.S. legally through the program during the Biden administration in 2023 and 2024. In late May, the Supreme Court paved the way to strip the temporary legal protections for beneficiaries, lifting a lower court order that kept the humanitarian parole protections in place. The news comes as hundreds of Cuban detainees at Krome detention facility in Miami recently staged a protest in which they spelled out S.O.S. to highlight their plight. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/dhs-ends-parole-program-for-cubans-haitians-nicaraguans-and-venezuelans/3636024/

CNN: Partial travel ban for Cuba goes into effect: CNN Havana bureau chief Patrick Oppmann reports from Havana that the Trump administration’s partial U.S. travel ban on Cuban nationals took effect last week, potentially impacting broad swaths of Cubans awaiting family reunification processes. Maria José Espinosa, executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, told Oppmann that the measure “will affect hundreds of thousands of American citizens who won’t be able to see their grandparents, who won’t be able to see their uncles. Even if it’s confusing, it’s going to impact families.” The partial ban affects both immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants, hindering cultural, scientific, academic, business, and athletic exchanges between the two countries. The partial ban, intended to get Cuba to receive more U.S. deportation flights and cooperate further with U.S. law enforcement, could have the opposite effect, Oppmann reports. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKsGhH_J5CT/?igsh=bGJpaTJ0cnBnZ3Jw

Trump to ramp up transfers to Guantánamo, including citizens of allies: Politico’s Nahal Toosi and Myah Ward report that the Trump administration is planning to drastically expand the number of undocumented migrants it will send to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, with 9,000 people being vetted for transfer, including citizens of U.S.-allied countries in Europe. The move would represent an exponential increase from the 500 detainees that have been held at the migrant detention facility for short periods of time since February, and a major step toward carrying out the plan Trump announced in January to hold upward of 30,000 migrants at the Guantánamo base. The authors note that State Department officials who focus on Europe are trying to convince the Department of Homeland Security to abandon the plan, which comes amid White House pressure for increased detentions, overcrowding at detention facilities on domestic U.S. soil and attempts to deter migrants from embarking on the journey to the U.S. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/10/trump-plans-migrants-guantanamo-bay-00396673

American Airlines looks to cut some Cuba flights: Airline industry publications report that American Airlines has asked for Department of Transportation permission to suspend during the upcoming summer months some of its flights to Cuba amid decreased demand to the island. The suspension, if approved, would slash in half the daily flights from Miami to Havana, and cut off completely all flights from Miami to Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city. The request came amid news of the Trump administration’s partial U.S. travel ban for Cuban nationals as well as fears surrounding U.S. re-entry among many South Florida residents after travel to Cuba, which have considerably depressed the rates of Cuban-American travel to Cuba so far in 2025. https://airlinegeeks.com/2025/06/07/american-looks-to-cut-some-cuba-flights/

Cuba issues verbal warning to top U.S. diplomat in Havana for ‘disrespectful conduct’: Cuban authorities issued a verbal warning to U.S. Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Mike Hammer, in response to behavior it deemed “interventionist,” a move Reuters Havana correspondent Dave Sherwood called “the latest escalation as diplomatic tensions grow between the long-time foes.” According to Sherwood, “Cuba’s decision to formally chastise Hammer comes just days after the US diplomat said in Miami that the Trump administration was preparing further sanctions against [Cuba]…which has repeatedly criticized Hammer for months but has not impeded his travels across the island.” The U.S. State Department says that Hammer has been meeting with “Cuban patriots, religious leaders and those fighting for the freedoms of Cubans,” while Cuban authorities insist the island-wide meetings have served to provide orientation and guidance to dissidents seeking destabilization on the island and increased punitive measures against its citizens. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-issues-verbal-warning-top-us-diplomat-havana-disrespectful-conduct-2025-05-30/

Cuba tried to improve its relations with the U.S. by cooperating with Trump’s deportation flights. It didn’t work.: Politico’s Eric Bazail-Eimil reports that despite accepting six U.S. deportation flights since President Trump took office, Cuban officials have not been able to improve relations with the U.S., as other countries have tried with varying levels of success. Senior Cuban officials Johana Tablada told Politico that the bilateral relationship is currently “at zero” and that “the State Department is not interested in having conversations with Cuba that have existed in the past,” such as on migration and law enforcement. Tablada blamed the impasse on those within and close to the U.S. government, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone, who advocate for maximum pressure toward Havana. “They’re doing everything possible to blow up what’s left of the relationship and the adult in the room is the Cuban government,” Tablada said. “If we did what they wanted, we’d be giving a pretext for those people who want to break off relations, create a migration crisis, and prompt a military intervention from the United States.” https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/02/cuba-us-relations-deportation-flights-johana-tablada-00381355

Cuban exiles were shielded from deportation. Now Trump is cracking down.: Associated Press’ Joshua Goodman reports from Miami that President Trump’s mass deportation pledge has “come as something of a shock to the 2.4 million Cuban-Americans, who strongly backed the Republican twice and have long enjoyed a place of privilege in the U.S. immigration system.” Goodman similarly discusses a target deportation list of 108 Cuban former government officials purportedly living in the United States that Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) sent to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March. The list, Goodman writes, was compiled by Luis Dominguez, who works with the USAID-funded Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba to dox Cuban officials allegedly behind human rights abuses, about which some Cuban-American Democrats in Florida, such as former Congressman Joe Garcia, have called a “witch hunt” that undermines legal processes and the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/cuban-exiles-were-shielded-from-deportation-now-trump-is-cracking-down/3622705/

Top U.S. diplomat in Havana promises more sanctions on Cuba: Mike Hammer, the top U.S. official at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, said at a press conference in Miami last month that the U.S. has more sanctions in store for Cuba, just days after forbidding U.S. entry to three Cuban judges and a prosecutor alleged of denying due process to protestors in Cuba, Dave Sherwood reports for Reuters. According to Sherwood, “President Donald Trump has already doubled down on sanctions since taking office in January, returning longtime foe Cuba to a U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, tightening rules on remittances, and shutting off Biden-era migration programs.” Senior Cuban official Johana Tablada said in response that “Hammer’s comments were not part of a neutral press conference, but rather a carefully orchestrated political operation…designed to position the Trump administration and (Secretary of State) Marco Rubio as though they were ‘allies of the Cuban people.’” Hammer alleged at the press conference that the hardships in Cuba have “nothing to do with any policy of the United States,” yet Sherwood notes in the article that the U.S. embargo constitutes a “web of restrictions that impede financial transactions, trade and tourism” on the island. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-top-diplomat-havana-promises-more-sanctions-cuba-2025-05-23/

Claver-Carone, a Cuba hardliner and Latin America adviser, leaves the Trump administration: The Miami Herald reports that the U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America at the State Department, Mauricio Claver-Carone, departed his role in late May to dedicate his full-time attention to the private equity group he helped found, LARA Fund, based in Miami. Claver-Carone’s departing interview with journalist Nora Gamez-Torres covers his role in shaping the first months of Trump’s policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean, including El Salvador, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba. Claver-Carone — who had vowed to devise “creative” measures that would lead to the “imminent” demise of the Cuban regime, and said he remains “just one phone call away” from the administration — is a “former lobbyist and director of the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC [who] threw his support behind Rubio’s presidential bid in 2016.” The two “worked closely during the first Trump administration to dismantle Obama’s policy of engagement with Cuba,” Gamez-Torres reports. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article306984896.html

Travel websites spared from lawsuits over seized property in Cuba: Bloomberg Law reports that U.S. travel website Expedia, along with its subsidiaries Trivago and Hotels.com, have been spared from lawsuits over expropriated property in Cuba brought to U.S. courts under Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton (LIBERTAD) Act, which President Trump reactivated shortly after taking office. Author Sam Skolnick writes that a “three-judge panel said they agreed with the district court that the plaintiffs haven’t shown that the travel website companies ‘knowingly trafficked in confiscated American property’ in violation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.” The decision comes after a landmark decision by a federal jury that Expedia, in a separate case, will be liable, subject to appeal, for nearly $30 million to a Cuban-American businessman in Florida who alleged that the company sold hotel reservations on land in Cayo Coco that had previously belonged to his family before the Cuban Revolution. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/travel-websites-spared-from-lawsuit-over-seized-property-in-cuba

Collateral damage: the environmental damage of Cuba’s terrorism designation: Journalist Vinicius Pereira writes in The Revelator that increasingly strict U.S. measures against the Cuban economy, including the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, are having adverse effects on the country’s environmental preservation efforts. “As U.S. restrictions tighten, Cuba’s efforts to protect its ecosystems are faltering — with rising deforestation, strained conservation programs, and growing pressure on protected areas,” Vinicius argues. Reporting from Havana and the central province of Santa Clara, the author writes that “the [terrorist] label, though aimed at Cuba’s government, severely restricts the entire island’s access to international funding, technology, and scientific collaboration. It also hinders any attempt at a genuine energy transition and makes the protection of Cuba’s rich biodiversity — among the most unique in the Caribbean — increasingly difficult.” https://therevelator.org/cuba-trump/

Cuba’s deputy foreign minister denies claims China is building spy bases in the country: Speaking from Mexico City to NPR correspondents Eyder Peralta and Ayesha Rascoe, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossió vehemently denied claims that China was building spy bases on Cuban soil, saying “there’s a huge difference between having antennas and having a military base of offensive nature against another country.” The senior Cuban official, who admitted to rising inequality on the island, said in response to reports of a forthcoming $1 billion Russian investment in Cuba that “the U.S. has better relations with Russia than Cuba does. So why would they be angry about Cuba taking loans from Russia?” In response to Peralta’s question about whether abandoning its one-party system would help improve relations with the U.S., Cossió said: “Their problem is not a single party because the United States has excellent relationships with countries that have no party whatsoever. Therefore, we would be very naive in Cuba to believe that that is [the] problem.” https://www.npr.org/2025/05/18/nx-s1-5395989/cubas-deputy-foreign-minister-denies-claims-china-is-building-spy-bases-in-the-country

US says Cuba ‘not fully cooperating’ with counter-terrorism efforts: In mid-May, the Trump administration returned Cuba to a list of countries that are “not fully cooperating” with U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, after the Biden administration had removed Cuba from the list in May 2024. Biden’s State Department had cited the removal of arrest warrants against Colombia’s ELN guerrilla leaders and resumed bilateral law enforcement talks as reasons to remove Cuba from the list. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited unspecified circumstances and Cuba’s refusal to return to the U.S. a handful of aging fugitives who haven’t been charged or convicted of terrorism as reasons to put Cuba back on the list. The designation, which restricts the transfer and sale of U.S. defense articles to the island, has no practical implications for Cuba, which is already prohibited from acquiring U.S. weapons due to other existing sanctions, yet the move sends a clear signal that the current administration does not intend to resume counter-terrorism dialogues with the island that had been re-initiated under Biden’s term. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-certifies-cuba-not-fully-cooperating-country-2025-05-13/