U.S. Ramps Up Pressure on Cuba

Restrictions on maritime traffic and a lawmaker’s proposal aim to “starve” Cubans under the guise of targeting the Cuban government

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

On Thursday, Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL-28) requested that the Trump administration impose measures to end all travel from the U.S. to Cuba and ban remittances sent from the U.S. to Cubans who are struggling on the island. This comes after a March announcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) restricting maritime travel between the two countries, essentially banning all Cuban vessels from the U.S.

Giménez, the only lawmaker who was born in Cuba, wrote a letter urging Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to apply further restrictions on the island, arguing that Cuba represents a threat to the United States and its citizens. Giménez offered no evidence to support such a claim against a government that has worked extensively with the U.S. on counterterrorism efforts and combating human smuggling and narcotrafficking.

“The Trump Administration's actions – most notably the tightening of restrictions on travel and remittances – were welcomed by our community as a much-needed step to limit the regime's access to resources and hard currency to further exploit and oppress the Cuban people,” Giménez wrote to Bissent. “We applaud and welcome the Administration's most recent policies to ban vessels arriving from Communist Cuba at U.S. ports, but more must be done,” Giménez continued.

While Giménez says that the Cuban American community supports these moves, he told Fox News, "All you’ve got to do is go to [Miami] and you'll see all kinds of flights from the United States to Cuba and back – that needs to stop … A lot of times when flights are going from Miami to Cuba, a lot of those people are taking goods and products, et cetera.” Giménez’s argument suggests that Cuban Americans who send money and goods to Cuba don’t support doing so even though they are the ones who send aid to their families.

Giménez has only returned to the island once since he left as a child, and that was during a recent trip to Guantánamo after Trump began using the base to house non-citizens from the U.S. Similarly, Giménez claims he has not sent any money or aid to his remaining family in Cuba. It's unclear if his extended family even talks to him.

As is typical for many anti-Cuba discussions about the future of the island, Giménez continued his doublespeak on Fox News, saying, "Many family members in Miami and in the United States try to help their family and friends as much as possible, and they want to visit every once in a while." And like his counterparts (Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the Diaz-Balart family, who have had multiple members of their family in Congress), Giménez struggles to justify his position as reality shows us the facts.

Giménez seems to be trying to build on the Trump administration's moves after wrongly placing Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) list. The White House did not provide evidence of the Cuban government doing so. However, the argument now is that the Cuban government isn’t doing enough to counter terrorism at its ports and that “it has not demonstrated that it will refrain from the use of excessive force against United States vessels or aircraft that may engage in memorial activities or peaceful protest north of Cuba.”

The U.S argues it has this authority under the Maritime Transportation Security Act and Title 46 of the U.S. Code, Section 70108 (amended with little fanfare in the defense spending bill in 2023), and the island's inclusion on the SSOT list. The USCG operates under DHS, which asserts, again, without evidence, that Cuba is not complying with effective counterterrorism measures based on assumptions highlighted in their own public notices.

“Section 70108, as amended by section 5603 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (Pub. L. 118-31, Dec. 22, 2023), states that DHS shall deem any port under the jurisdiction of a foreign government that is a state sponsor of terrorism as not having effective anti-terrorism measures, and immediately apply the sanctions described in 46 U.S.C. 70110(a) to such a port.”

While the USCG says that the International Port Security (IPS) Program operated by DHS “engages in bilateral or multilateral discussions with maritime trade partners around the world,” it’s worth noting that every country represented in the United Nations – except for Israel and the U.S. – oppose the unilateral sanctions and the economic blockade of Cuba thus leaving everyone to assume that the two countries are the bilateral trade partners in these latest moves. Neither agency has provided details of support from other nations.

Over the last several years, Cuba has uncovered many terrorist plots against it that were planned in the United States. The duplicity of U.S. political leaders is astounding.

Read Rep. Giménez's Letter

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