The Trump administration has spent the first 10 months of this year “starving” Cuba through an oil blockade and a raft of sanctions aimed at cutting the island off from trade and investment.
Now, the administration is targeting U.S. citizens.
This week, we look at the latest assault on Cuba, which restricts students and teachers from traveling to the country on educational programs, makes it illegal for U.S. doctors and scientists to travel to the island for meetings and conferences, and blocks Cuban entrepreneurs from accessing their own money in U.S. bank accounts.
Also:
Salazar’s Deportation Double Talk
“Help Me Get Back to My Little Girl”
The Anonymous Source Playbook
Cuba Fires Back at Trump at the UN
Salazar’s Deportation Double Talk
One of the most vocal supporters of the Trump administration’s economic war on Cuba is now scrambling to escape the political fallout from the very hard-line policies she has long championed.
Since taking office in 2021, Cuban-American Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has been as zealous in her support for Trump as she has been in advocating for the economic war that has destroyed Cuba’s economy and fueled an unprecedented wave of migration to the United States—including to her own district in Miami.
But when Trump brought his mass deportation campaign to South Florida, Salazar suddenly found herself in a political bind: the president she had steadfastly backed was now going after many of her own constituents.
Like nearly all Republicans in recent years, Salazar expressed unwavering support for Trump and his policies, including his crackdown on immigrants. In the last two years, she has voted to give ICE and the Department of Homeland Security more than $100 billion in additional funding.
“You give money to ICE to look for the illegals who are criminals,” she said.
But now, with a surprise Democratic challenger vying for her seat, Salazar has done an about-face, criticizing Trump for going “too far” with his immigration enforcement.
Belly of the Beast journalist María Karla Acosta Toledo breaks down how Salazar’s obsession with regime change in Cuba and her loyalty to Trump have helped create the political mess she now finds herself in.
Last year, ICE detained Heidy Sánchez at a scheduled immigration appointment and deported her to Cuba within days, separating her from her husband and two-year-old daughter in Tampa, Florida.
Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández spoke with Heidy in Havana after her deportation. At the time, she had an immigration lawyer, who was helping her apply at the U.S. embassy for a visa to return to the United States.
Rarely a week passes without Washington imposing new sanctions on Cuba. Most have targeted Cuban state-run companies and government officials.
But this week, the Trump administration set its sights on U.S. citizens.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued new restrictions Wednesday on travel to Cuba. They include making it illegal for U.S. citizens to attend professional meetings or conferences in Cuba; restricting the ability of students to travel to the island for educational programs; and eliminating group people-to-people travel, which allowed U.S. citizens to visit Cuba on organized trips.
The new restrictions take aim in part at solidarity activists in the United States who travel to Cuba to engage directly with people on the island and bear witness to the devastating impact of U.S. sanctions. The measures come two months after the State Department published a 100-page McCarthyite manifesto accusing Cuba of “grafting itself onto every new enemy of the United States” and influencing virtually every major U.S. progressive movement over the past 65 years.
But the travel restrictions won't just impact activists who are already critical of U.S. policy. They will also make it harder for U.S. citizens who don’t know Cuba to visit the country, learn about it firsthand and form their own views. The conspiratorial fiction about Cuba posing a threat to the United States that is being peddled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is harder to sustain when people travel to Cuba and see the country for themselves, encountering a reality that bears little resemblance to the one portrayed by the U.S. government and corporate media outlets.
“The more U.S. citizens see Cuba with their own eyes, the more obvious it becomes that U.S. policy toward Cuba needs to change,” said Belly of the Beast journalist Daniel Montero in a video we released four years ago. “I’ve worked as a tour guide for hundreds of U.S. citizens. I have yet to meet one who supports the economic war the United States is waging against my country.”
The Trump administration also rolled back Biden-era banking measures Wednesday, requiring U.S. banks to freeze accounts held by Cuban entrepreneurs and barring them from routing payments to overseas suppliers.
U.S. sanctions have already disrupted how Cuban private businesses get paid. In June, Cuba’s central bank announced the suspension of Visa and Mastercard transactions after the foreign bank that processed those transactions cut ties with Cuba to avoid Treasury Department fines.
The Trump administration is now undermining the very private sector Marco Rubio has claimed that U.S. policy is trying to put “in a privileged position.”
“This could create new obstacles and difficulties for payments related to international purchases by the private sector, which underpin the entire process of importing food, fuel and other products essential to the country,” according to Oniel Díaz Castellanos, co-founder of AUGE, a Havana-based consulting company that advises private businesses in Cuba.
The Anonymous Source Playbook
As Trump tightens his grip on Cuba’s economy, his administration turned to a familiar playbook to drum up public support for regime change on the island.
CBS News reported Saturday that it obtained an internal U.S. Army Reserve message seeking military police, surgical teams and supply units that could be available within 90 to 120 days.
Though the leaked message made no direct reference to the island, anonymous Trump administration officials told the outlet that the request was related to “continued military planning aimed at Cuba.”
Hours after the CBS story was published Saturday, Trump told reporters he’s confident that he will reach a deal with Cuba.
“I don’t think we’ll need the military,” he said.
CBS’s report fits a pattern Belly of the Beast has documented all year, as anonymous officials feed corporate media outlets accounts of U.S. plans to overthrow Cuba’s government.
Here are some recent examples:
In August, Politico reported the Trump administration had spent months expanding its intelligence presence in Cuba. Its source? “Two people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans for the island.”
Two days later, The New York Times claimed the CIA was assembling a task force to sow divisions within Cuba’s leadership. According to whom? “People briefed on the action.”
The Times followed up with a story that U.S. intelligence agencies were searching for a Cuban official to take power if regime change succeeded. Who said so? Unnamed “administration officials.”
Read more about the Trump administration’s Cuba regime change strategy and the media selling it HERE.
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Rodríguez also rejected Trump’s allegations that Cuba harbors foreign adversaries and cultivates ties with “subversive and radical groups” in the United States.
“Cuba is not a threat. The blockade is,” he said.
Rodríguez reiterated Cuba’s desire for dialogue and warned that a U.S. military attack would lead to unnecessary deaths on both sides of the Florida Straits.
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