US imposes new sanctions on Cuban officials and state entities

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Aug. 20 a new round of U.S. sanctions targeting three Cuban officials and nine state entities, accusing the communist regime of using them to fund domestic repression and anti-American activities.

The sanctions — issued under an executive order from President Donald Trump — target three leaders of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and state-controlled entities involved in mining, metals, construction, foreign trade, and labor contracting, according to a State Department press release.

“The Cuban regime has long sponsored a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalizing subversives, largely operating under the pretext of educational or cultural exchange,” Rubio said in the release. 

He said the regime recently sought to use events marking Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday to bring international sympathizers to Havana to network with regime officials. 

“The Trump Administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms — none of which are afforded to its people — by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and Communist violence across the world,” Rubio said.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez criticized the sanctions in an Aug. 20 X post.

“The Secretary of State of #USA continues to punish Cuban companies with the deliberate purpose of harming our economy and preventing the government of #Cuba from guaranteeing basic services to the population, which are already in a critical situation as a result of the blockade,” Rodríguez wrote in Spanish, according to an unofficial translation.

The sanctions target ICAP President Fernando González Llort, First Vice President Noemí Ramona Rabaza Fernández, and North America Director Leima Martínez Freire.

González Llort was one of the “Cuban Five,” a group of Cuban intelligence agents arrested in the U.S. in 1998 in connection with the Wasp Network, an illegal Cuban spy ring operating in Florida. According to the release, he served about 15 years in federal prison before the U.S. released him to Cuba in a 2014 prisoner exchange.

The Treasury Department also identified three ICAP facilities — Campamento Internacional Julio Antonio Mella, Casa Memorial Salvador Allende, and Casa de la Amistad — as alternative addresses for the sanctioned organization, meaning they are subject to the same restrictions.

The nine newly sanctioned entities include eight state-owned enterprises involved in nickel and cobalt production, metals and mineral trading, imports, tourism supplies, transportation, and labor contracting, as well as Cuba’s Ministry of Construction.

“Today’s designations make clear that the Trump Administration will not tolerate the Cuban regime’s efforts to fund its repression or continue its decades-long campaign of subversive anti-American activities.”