Cuban

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A Cuban man deported by the United States to the African nation of Eswatini is on a hunger strike at a maximum-security prison, having been held there for more than three months without charge or access to legal counsel under the Trump administration’s third-country program, his U.S.-based lawyer said Wednesday.

Roberto Mosquera del Peral was one of five men sent to the small kingdom in southern Africa in mid-July as part of the U.S. deportation program to Africa. It has been criticized by rights groups and lawyers, who say deportees are being denied due process and exposed to rights abuses.

Mosquera’s lawyer, Alma David, said in a statement sent to the Associated Press that he had been on a hunger strike for a week, and there were serious concerns over his health.

“My client is arbitrarily detained, and now his life is on the line,” David said. “I urge the Eswatini Correctional Services to provide Mr. Mosquera’s family and me with an immediate update on his condition and to ensure that he is receiving adequate medical attention. I demand that Mr. Mosquera be permitted to meet with his lawyer in Eswatini.”

The Eswatini government said Mosquera was “fasting and praying because he was missing his family” and described it as “religious practices” that it wouldn’t interfere with, a characterization disputed by David. She said in response: “It is not a religious practice. It’s an act of desperation and protest.”

Mosquera was among a group of five men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen deported to Eswatini, an absolute monarchy ruled by a king who is accused of clamping down on human rights. The Jamaican man was repatriated to his home country last month, but the others have been kept at the prison for more than three months, while an Eswatini-based lawyer has launched a case against the government demanding they be given access to legal counsel.

Civic groups in Eswatini have also taken authorities to court to challenge the legality of holding foreign nationals in prison without charge. Eswatini said that the men would be repatriated but could be held there for up to a year.

U.S. authorities say they want to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Eswatini under the same program.

The men sent to Eswatini were criminals convicted of serious offenses, including murder and rape, and were in the U.S. illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said. It said that Mosquera had been convicted of murder and other charges and was a gang member.

The men’s lawyers said they had all completed their criminal sentences in the U.S. and are now being held illegally in Eswatini.

Homeland Security has cast the third-country deportation program as a means to remove “illegal aliens” from American soil as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying they have a choice to self-deport or be sent to a country like Eswatini.

The Trump administration has sent deportees to at least three other African nations — South Sudan, Rwanda and Ghana — since July under largely secretive agreements. It also has an agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been announced.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said that it has seen documents that show that the U.S. is paying African nations millions of dollars to accept deportees. It said that the U.S. agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to take up to 160 deportees and Rwanda $7.5 million to take up to 250 deportees.

Another 10 deportees were sent to Eswatini this month and are believed to be held at the same Matsapha Correctional Complex prison outside the administrative capital, Mbabane. Lawyers said that those men are from Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Cuba, Chad, Ethiopia and Congo.

Lawyers say the four men who arrived in Eswatini on a deportation flight in July haven’t been allowed to meet with an Eswatini lawyer representing them, and phone calls to their U.S.-based attorneys are monitored by prison guards. They have expressed concern that they know little about the conditions in which their clients are being held.

“I demand that Mr. Mosquera be permitted to meet with his lawyer in Eswatini,” David said in her statement. “The fact that my client has been driven to such drastic action highlights that he and the other 13 men must be released from prison. The governments of the United States and Eswatini must take responsibility for the real human consequences of their deal.”

Imray writes for the Associated Press. Nokukhanya Musi contributed to this report from Manzini, Eswatini.

Aug. 13 (UPI) — The U.S. State Department on Wednesday imposed visa restrictions on foreign government officials accused of assisting the Cuban regime in a scheme exploiting medical professionals.

Officials from several African nations, Cuba Grenada were sanctioned in a State Department news release. Then later Wednesday, several Brazilian government officials and former Pan American Health Organization officials were targeted for their work with Brazil’s More Doctors program. In all situations, their family members are also affected.

“We are committed to ending this practice,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X after the African and Grenadian officials were sanctioned. “Countries who are complicit in this exploitative practice should think twice.”

After Brazilians were named, Marco wrote on X: “Mais Médicos [Spanish for More Doctors] was an unconscionable diplomatic scam of foreign ‘medical missions.'”

Cuba is accused of sending the workers to some 50 countries for little or no pay for long hours, keeping their passports, confiscating medical credentials, and subjecting them to surveillance and curfews. Many of them reported being sexually abused by their supervisors. If they left the program, they faced repercussions.

Rubio said “several” African nations were sanctioned. Marco and the news release didn’t name that continent’s countries or the officials involved there, as well as Cuba and Grenada.

But the release about Brazil named: Mozart Julio Tabosa Sales and Alberto Kleiman, who worked in the nation’s Ministry of Health, played a role in planning and implementing the New Doctors program.

These officials used PAHO as an intermediary with the Cuban regime to implement the program “without following Brazilian constitutional requirements, dodging U.S. sanctions on Cuba, and knowingly paying the Cuban regime what was owed to Cuban medical workers,” according to the release.

In the described scheme, they were complicit with the Cuban government, in which medical professionals were “rented” by other countries at higher prices, with most of the revenue kept by the Cuban authorities, the State Department alleged.

They were involved in “depriving the Cubans of essential care,” the State Department said.

“The United States continues to engage governments, and will take action as needed, to bring an end to such forced labor,” the first release said. “We urge governments to pay the doctors directly for their services, not the regime slave masters.”

The federal agency urged governments to end this method of forced labor.

In June, the U.S. agency imposed visa restrictions on unspecified Central American government officials for being involved in the medical mission program.

Rubio at the time described a similar scheme in which “officials responsible for Cuban medical missions programs that include elements of forced labor and the exploitation of Cuban workers.”

In June, Havana’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, said the visa restrictions were “based on falsehoods and coercion.”

In late May, the State Department suspended the applications for J-1 visas, which allow people to come to the United States for exchange visitor programs. One week later, the department resumed visa interviews, but people seeking the visas were required to make their social media accounts public.

This year, more than 6,600 non-U.S. citizen doctors were accepted into residency programs, according to the National Resident Matching Program. Many residents go into underserved communities because they are less popular among U.S. applicants.

Medical professionals comprised 75% of Cuba’s exported workforce, generating $4.9 billion of its total $7 billion in 2022, according to the State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report.

“Traffickers exploit Cuban citizens in sex trafficking and forced labor in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Latin America and the United States,” the report said.”

Simultaneously, the U.S. government has fully restricted and limited people from 12 foreign countries in June. Cuba was among seven nations with restricted and limited entry.

“These restrictions distinguish between, but apply to both, the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants,” the order states about the two designations,” a proclamation by President Donald Trump reads.

Trump issued the ban on nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Also partial restricted were those form Burundi, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

MIAMI — For decades, its powerful lighthouse illuminated Miami’s Biscayne Bay, and during the height of the Cold War, what was known as the Freedom Tower stood as a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing communist rule.

The 14-story Spanish Revival skyscraper was where, from 1962 to 1974, the U.S. State Department welcomed Cuban refugees with medical services, English classes, and comfort kits containing essentials and something wholly exotic to the new arrivals: peanut butter.

After decades of neglect, what was once Miami’s tallest building is getting a well-deserved facelift. Next month, it will reopen as a museum honoring the history of Cuban exiles with immersive, state-of-the-art exhibits that explore the meaning of migration, freedom and homeland.

Ellis Island of the South

The reopening of what’s dubbed the Ellis Island of the South comes at a sensitive moment. Cuban Americans — who dominate politics in Miami — voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the last presidential election. But the president’s crackdown on migrants — including Cubans — is increasingly viewed as a betrayal and has left many second-guessing that support. Not surprisingly, recent protests against Trump have gathered outside the tower.

The organizers of the museum, while tiptoeing around the present-day politics, are nonetheless unapologetic in their embrace of the American dream. In Miami, a thriving crossroads where 70% of residents speak Spanish as their first language and more than half are foreign-born, compassion for migrants runs deep.

“It’s cyclical,” said Rene Ramos, who as head archivist of Miami Dade College participated in the $65 million renovation led by the school. “This country has had moments where it clearly saw the value of immigrants and other moments when it did not. What we’re doing here is reminding people what immigrants can accomplish when they’re given the opportunity.”

The iconic building opened in 1925 as the headquarters of the once-acclaimed Miami Daily News, which shuttered decades ago. It was designed in the style of a Moorish bell tower from Seville, Spain, by the New York architectural firm Schultze & Weaver, which was behind some of the most glamorous hotels, theaters and office towers of the era.

It was renamed the Freedom Tower when President John F. Kennedy launched the Cuban Refugee Assistance Program to resettle the streams of middle-class individuals and families fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution. It’s estimated that nearly 400,000 Cubans relied on services provided at the tower by the U.S. government in coordination with the then-fledgling Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. The total cost of the refugee assistance ran over $730 million by 1971 — almost $6 billion in today’s dollars — a U.S. government report from that year found.

A safe place for refugees

Known to the Spanish-speaking migrants as “El Refugio,” or “The Refuge,” it was a safe place to get vaccines, fill out paperwork and receive financial assistance of around $120 per month. In the Grand Hall, with its giant windows and Corinthian columns, the Pizarra de la Suerte — the Bulletin Board of Good Luck — carried job notices to help the Cubans adjust to their new life, according to a replica of the hall in the museum.

At the time, metropolitan Miami was a tropical tourist town, with fewer than 1 million inhabitants. Most émigrés fanned out across the United States.

“They weren’t staying in Miami because they didn’t want warmth and sunshine. There were no jobs,” said Madeline Pumariega, the president of Miami Dade College, whose own Cuban parents relocated to Amarillo, Texas, after arriving here.

But over time, the exiles would trudge back from the cold and snow to put their unmistakable Cuban stamp on what would become one of America’s most vibrant cultural and economic hubs.

Jorge Malagón, who teaches history at Miami Dade College, was just 5 when he arrived. But he still wells up recalling the hardship of his departure — when Cuban customs officials ripped open his teddy bear looking for contraband jewelry — and arriving in Miami on a “Freedom Flight” paid for by the U.S. government and being immediately shuttled in a school bus from the tarmac to the Freedom Tower.

“The memories never go away,” said Malagón, who recalls being welcomed with a bar of unfamiliar peanut butter and a block of government cheese. “To this day, a grilled cheese sandwich with cheap, Velveeta processed cheese is still comfort food to me.”

The Freedom Tower, a national historic landmark, was long ago overtaken by Miami’s fast-growing steel and glass skyline. Abandoned for years, it was rescued in 1997 by Cuban American businessman Jorge Mas Canosa, a top exile opponent of Castro. He later sold it to a prominent Cuban American family and it was then donated to Miami Dade College.

Even in a dilapidated state, the tower remained a mecca of the Cuban diaspora. In 2003, tens of thousands of salsa fans gathered here to show their respects to Cuban-born singer Celia Cruz. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents migrated from Cuba, used it as the backdrop to announce his bid for the U.S. presidency in 2015.

The current restoration was funded by $25 million investment from the state of Florida, with additional funding from Miami Dade College, private donors and federal government grants.

Galleries designed by the same firm behind New York City’s National September 11 Memorial & Museum provide a gripping account of the Cuban American journey to freedom. They include exhibits dedicated to Victims of Communism, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion that the CIA organized against Castro, and the 14,000 unaccompanied minors sent by their parents as part of the U.S.-led Operation Peter Pan.

Giant media screens project scenes of protest and acts of courage by newer residents of the Magic City fleeing persecution in Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua. There’s also a makeshift recording studio for those who passed through the Freedom Tower to add their testimony to an archive of over 300 oral history interviews with exiles, including prominent voices like singer Gloria Estefan.

Emerging from the dark galleries of often traumatic stories of dislocation and exile, the museum’s final stop is a gallery flooded with all the sun, salsa music and pastel hues that make modern-day Miami so beloved.

“Miami and the world would not be what it is today without them,” said Pumariega. “That’s important and so is the contributions that immigrants play in our country, and I think will continue to play beyond this moment.”

Goodman writes for the Associated Press.

Labour Minister Marta Elena Feito Cabrera’s comments dismissing poverty in the Caribbean island nation trigger angry backlash.

Cuban Labour and Social Security Minister Marta Elena Feito Cabrera has resigned after saying there are no beggars in Cuba, only people pretending to be.

Cuba’s presidency said in a post on social media on Wednesday that Feito had “acknowledged her errors and submitted her resignation” over her “lack of objectivity and sensitivity” in addressing issues that are “at the centre of political and governmental management”.

The news came a day after Feito made the comments about poverty in the island nation to deputies in a National Assembly committee.

“We have seen people, apparently beggars, [but] when you look at their hands, look at the clothes these people are wearing, they are disguised as beggars. They are not beggars,” Feito said.

“In Cuba, there are no beggars,” she said.

The minister added that people cleaning car windscreens live “easy” lives and they use the money they make to “drink alcohol”.

Feito also lashed out against those who search through rubbish dumps, saying they are recovering materials “to resell and not pay tax”.

The remarks quickly went viral, prompting calls for Feito’s impeachment and a wave of criticism in a country experiencing a tough economic situation in recent years.

Even Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was critical.

Without mentioning her by name but referring to the meeting at the National Assembly committee in which Feito participated, Diaz-Canel said on his X account: “The lack of sensitivity in addressing vulnerability is highly questionable. The revolution cannot leave anyone behind; that is our motto, our militant responsibility.”

Cuba blames its economic woes on a Cold War-era United States trade embargo, which complicates financial transactions and the acquisition of essentials, such as fuel and spare parts. The US imposed the embargo in 1960 after the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro.

The embargo is widely criticised with 185 of 193 countries at the United Nations voting to condemn it.

US President Donald Trump recently tightened sanctions on the island’s Communist Party-run government, pledging to restore a “tough” policy towards the Caribbean country.

Former US President Barack Obama took considerable steps to ease tensions with Cuba during his time in office, including restoring US-Cuba relations and making the first visit by a US president to the country in 90 years. Cuba has also faced an energy crisis and blackouts in recent months as supplies of subsidised Venezuelan oil have become increasingly precarious as Venezuela grapples with its own economic woes.

Last week, the US Department of State imposed sanctions against Diaz-Canel as well as the luxury high-rise Hotel Torre K in central Havana.

Travel and tourism are important to Cuba’s struggling economy with millions of tourists visiting the island nation each year.

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Cuba had a gross domestic product of $9,296 per person in 2019, making it an upper middle income country.