US sanctions three Cuban officials and nine entities, tightening pressure for political change

The United States intensified its pressure campaign against Cuba by sanctioning three Cuban officials and nine state-run entities on Thursday. The targeted entities include those involved in mining, foreign trade, and metallurgy, notably the Ministry of Construction.

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Today, the State Department designates nine entities and three individuals to advance the Administration’s comprehensive initiative to end the Cuban regime’s malignant activities both in Cuba and throughout our hemisphere.

These new designations are part of a comprehensive initiative by the Trump Administration aimed at compelling political and economic reforms within Cuba. The State Department announced the move, stating it is intended to halt the Cuban regime's alleged "malignant activities" both within Cuba and across the hemisphere.

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The Cuban regime has spent decades using cutouts to infiltrate Americans, corrupt them, and radicalize them.

Among those sanctioned are high-ranking officials from the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), including its director, Fernando González Llort, who was previously imprisoned in the U.S. as part of the Wasp Network spy ring. The U.S. accuses ICAP of operating a subversive network within the United States to identify, recruit, and radicalize Americans.

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The Trump Administration will not stand idly by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms, freedoms its own people enjoy none of, by deceiving and corrupting American citizens with lies, espionage, and other nefarious acts, as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and communist violence around the world.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted that these measures demonstrate the administration's refusal to tolerate the Cuban regime's efforts to fund repression and continue its alleged decades-long campaign of subversive anti-American activities. The sanctioned entities are accused of supporting and financing the Cuban government's repressive apparatus.

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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.