The 2028 Olympic Ban You Haven’t Heard of

Cuban athletes are being denied visas to compete in Olympic qualifiers — a decision that could keep them out of the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

By blocking Cuban athletes from competing, the U.S. is breaking the Olympic Charter’s promise of fair play. In response, the U.S.Hands Off Cuba Committee has launched a campaign demanding – in the Olympic spirit of inclusion and global friendship – that Cuban athletes be granted visas and allowed to compete in LA in 2028.

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“It’s ridiculous that sports teams—any sports team—would even be denied their visas for something that the whole world is going to enjoy on the day of the Olympics,” said Hakim Jihad, coordinator of the U.S. Hands Off Cuba Committee in Jacksonville. “You would not only deprive the United States, but the entire world of the presence of the Cuban people at the Olympics.”

The U.S. Hands Off Cuba Committee has launched a campaign against Washington’s denial of visas to Cuban athletes.

Since the Trump administration imposed a travel ban on Cuba in June, most Cuban athletes have been denied U.S. visas to compete in pre-Olympic qualifying tournaments. The campaign is now calling on the International Olympic Committee to pressure Washington to allow Cuban athletes to participate in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

“I just heard about the Olympic campaign working to get athletes from Cuba visas so that they can come and enter the Olympic trials that are taking place in the U.S. and Puerto Rico,” said Megan Roemer, National Co-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. “It’s for the next Olympic Games, which will be held in the U.S., in Los Angeles.”

“They have been refused multiple times,” explained Brenda Lopez, Co-Chair of the U.S. Hands Off Cuba Committee, “including small leagues, the most recent being the Women’s Little League. They gave visas to the fourteen girls, but not to their parents—so they wouldn’t have any guardians.”

“It’s reaching folks who maybe aren’t paying attention to the minutia of international politics,” Roemer added, “but who do like sports, and who do understand that the Olympics is supposed to be about the world coming together to see something better.”

“One of the things that we’re going to be doing in Jacksonville,” said Jihad, “is going to every football game, every basketball game we can, and we’ll be outside the arenas promoting this campaign.”

“It’s affecting everyday, common people who are just trying to play sports and be part of cultural environments,” Lopez noted.

“This will be a great way to get people—left wing, right wing, even apolitical—involved,” Jihad continued. “Because it’s very obvious that what’s being done to the Cuban people is an act of cruelty. Labeling them as terrorists is simply propaganda.”

“Most American people don’t even know that there’s still a blockade,” Lopez said. “And so this is a way for us to initiate that conversation through a less political aspect that might be interesting to some people.”

“Athletics is so important to Cuban people,” Roemer concluded. “They love baseball. They love football. Soccer. What kind of Olympics is it if the Cubans can’t participate?”