U.S. Tightens Cuba Travel Restrictions for American Citizens

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.”

Cuban Entrepreneurs in the Crosshairs 

The Trump administration also rolled back Biden-era banking measuresWednesday, 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.