The Hidden Truth About Counternarcotics in the Caribbean
December 20, 2025
“The most efficient partner of the United States in security terms in Latin America is Cuba.”
—Hal Klepak, military historian, former NATO analyst and former advisor to Canada's foreign and defense ministers
Every year, the State Department delivers its International Narcotics Control Strategy Report to Congress. The document is a country-by-country breakdown of “all aspects of the international drug trade.”
The 2024 report states that Cuba is “not a major consumer, producer, or transshipment point for illicit drugs” and notes that its “robust and aggressive security presence reduces domestic demand and severely limits the ability of transnational criminal organizations to establish a foothold.” Drug traffickers, it says, “typically bypass Cuba in favor of neighboring countries.”
The report adds that the Cuban Border Guard has a “long-standing relationship with the U.S. Coast Guard and frequently reports known or suspected drug trafficking."
This year, under the supervision of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose brother-in-law was convicted of smuggling cocaine into the U.S. in the 1980s, the State Department excised Cuba from the entire International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.
No explanation was provided and the State Department did not respond toBelly of the Beast's requests for comment.
Could it be that the section on Cuba was cut because the State Department’s own analysis undermines the administration’s narrative?
We reported on the island’s counternarcotics efforts in eastern Cuba two years ago. Liz Oliva Fernández interviewed members of the Cuban Border Guard as well as a U.S. embassy official and a U.S. Coast Guard official who were meeting with their counterparts. Watch Liz’s video.
“The Coast Guard has always maintained very close relations with the Cuban government, and especially with the Interior Ministry and the Cuban Border Guard," said U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Alejandro Collazo. “I would dare say we speak to each other more than once a week.”
Despite Cuba’s erasure from the State Department's 2025 counternarcotics report, Cuba says it continues to collaborate with the United States.
“We’re providing the U.S. with information in real time,” Colonel Ybey Carballo, chief of Cuba's Border Guard, said at a recent press conference. “We tell them the characteristics of the boats, how many engines they have, the number of crew members.”
But the U.S. government's willingness to reciprocate Cuba's counternarcotics efforts may not be the same as it was a year ago.
Colonel Juan Carlos Poey, head of the Interior Ministry’s anti-drug unit, said that despite a 2016 counternarcotics agreement between the two countries, the U.S. is cooperating with Cuba “sporadically.”
Poey said the main source of drugs entering Cuba is the United States.
Nonetheless, Cuban counternarcotics officials continue to cooperate with their U.S. counterparts.
Last week, Cuban authorities announced they had detained 24 people involved in a network that trafficked drugs from the U.S. into Havana. The operation seized “more than a million doses” of the synthetic cannabinoid known as el quimico (the chemical). According to the Ministry of Interior, Cuba has submitted evidence of U.S. residents’ involvement in the operation to the Trump administration.