The administration of US President Donald Trump is increasing pressure on Cuba by imposing more economic sanctions on industries in the heavily sanctioned socialist country and expanding enforcement of laws that prevent Americans visiting the island from doing business with government-owned or government-linked companies.
The Treasury and State Departments announced Thursday that they had imposed new sanctions on nine state-owned mining, metallurgy and construction companies along with the leadership of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with Peoples (ICAP). Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the institute was responsible for fostering “a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, developing, and radicalizing Americans.”
“Just days ago, the regime attempted to exploit the centenary of the birth of communist leader and tyrant Fidel Castro to activate this subversive network and transfer a new brigade of international sympathizers to Havana to communicate with regime officials,” Rubio said in a statement.
“The Trump administration will not stand idly by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms — of which its own people have none — by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, espionage, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and communist violence around the world,” Rubio said.
The Republican Trump administration has steadily increased pressure on Havana, threatening it with possible military intervention even as it is mired in a conflict against Iran, while also strengthening economic sanctions aimed at cutting off funding to the Cuban government. The oil blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba after the US military raid that ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, whose country supplied Cuba with free oil, caused the already economically paralyzed island to slide into a full-blown crisis.
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The Cuban embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new sanctions. Cuba routinely denounces US sanctions and its decades-long blockade of the island, and accuses multiple administrations of unfairly targeting the poor country and its people simply because of ideological differences and proximity to the United States.
The latest sanctions follow an operation at the Miami airport last weekend during which several American citizens returning to the United States from Cuba after participating in events marking Castro’s birthday were briefly detained, according to US officials. Some had their cell phones and other personal electronic devices confiscated for inspection, officials said.
U.S. authorities were prepared to detain dozens of returning activists for secondary screening, but far fewer of them were found to meet the criteria for enhanced interrogation by CBP agents, the officials said. The detainees were eventually released and allowed to enter the United States, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the operation had not been made public.
Officials said anyone detained and released could face prosecution if they are found to have violated U.S. sanctions, which ban all transactions with Cuban government-owned entities, including restaurants, hotels and stores. However, the status of the seized mobile phones, laptops and tablets was not clear.
The new sanctions imposed on the leadership of the International Anti-Corruption Institute target the group’s head, Fernando Gonzalez Lort, who was among five Cuban intelligence officers arrested in the United States in 1998 but later released in 2014. They also target the organization’s first vice president, Noemi Ramona Rabaza Fernandez, and its North American director, Lima Martinez Freire.
The metals, mining and construction sector sanctions target a nickel production company, two companies specializing in importing heavy industrial products, a mineral resources company, the Cuban Ministry of Construction, a company that provides Cuban workers to foreign entities on the island, and two companies that import vehicles, auto parts and construction materials.
The Trump administration has also intensified a campaign portraying Cuba as a serious threat to US national security. In a report released last month, the State Department accused the Cuban government of sponsoring or supporting leftist and anti-American activity in the United States over the past six decades.
While Cuba has been plunging deeper into a crisis for about five years, the Trump administration’s oil blockade has thrown the country into free fall.
The lack of fuel necessary to provide Cubans with electricity led to the island entering into a comprehensive power outage. Access to public transportation has virtually disappeared, shortages of things like medicine have worsened, business hours have been cut to adapt to the outages, and tourism, the island’s economic lifeblood, has evaporated.
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