February 22, 2025
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The United States has rejected “dozens of” Cuban passports and has not granted visas that had been processed by Cuban state agencies in recent days, such as for athletes due to arrive for a basketball tournament, the island’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
“We can confirm that in the last few hours the United States government has returned dozens of passports without visas and announced that the application mechanism for a group of visa categories used for government officials and their agencies has been suspended,” Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told the Associated Press in a written statement.
According to the Cuban official, this “decision directly affects bilateral exchanges that were taking place in areas of mutual interest and benefit for the people of Cuba and the United States, such as culture, health, education, science and sport”.
Usually, Cuban representatives in these areas travel all over the world with a passport arranged by their employers and with the respective visas.
Relations between the two countries became strained during the first term of President Donald Trump, who radically tightened sanctions against the island, pressuring a change in the political model, after the historic rapprochement of the Barak Obama administration.
During Joe Biden’s time in the White House there were no major changes, but days before the end of his term he removed the island from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism, which had caused many difficulties in the Caribbean nation’s foreign trade. In his new term, Trump reinstated it.
A request for comment to the US embassy in Cuba about the refusal to issue visas and the return of passports was not immediately answered.
Among those affected would be the basketball team due to take part in a qualifying game on Sunday in Puerto Rico, acknowledged Fernández de Cossío and the local basketball federation.
The refusal would be in accordance with a 2020 US regulation refusing to grant visas to countries that do not cooperate with the return of immigrants, a Cuban diplomatic source told AP, preferring not to be identified as they were not authorized to offer details in this regard.
Official media outlets showed images of migrants returned on flights from 2023 onwards after the two governments resumed an agreement for deportations by this route.
In August 2024, it was even reported that more than 1,000 citizens had been handed over to Cuba by US officials. Most of them had left the island legally and tried to enter the neighboring country via the southern border.
There are also regular returns by sea of people intercepted on the high seas.
Vice-minister Fernández de Cossío said he had no comment when asked if deportation flights had already been received in January or February during Trump’s administration.
Source: Cuba en Resumen