GOP Senators question Biden-Harris Cuban visa program, saying it endangers national security

U.S. senators are demanding answers about another visa program expanding entry to Cuban nationals they argue “further endangers our national security.” They sounded the alarm after a Cuban American congressman said nearly 115 Cuban regime agents are illegally living in south Florida.

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to explain why a nonimmigrant visa (NIV) program was expanded through the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba. The NIV “does not serve America’s interests,” they said. “It only benefits Cuba’s cruel, adversarial regime – a designated State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) – and further endangers our national security.”

Because the State Department has designated Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria as SSOT, they also asked if it was granting NIVs to citizens from all SSOT countries.

They expressed concerns that NIVs weren’t being properly vetted, saying “it will be nearly impossible to provide proper vetting” because of the “regime’s lack of transparency and our inadequate insight into the island.”

Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-FL, uncovered that federal agency “vetting” involved relying on the SSOT to provide information about its citizens prior to entry, a process he said was “insane” and planned to change, The Center Square reported.

Because releasing citizens of SSOT into the U.S. cannot benefit Americans, Rubio’s delegation argues, the only possible explanation is that “this is yet another case of the Biden-Harris Administration’s appeasement of the regime.”

They also expressed alarm about former high-ranking Cuban officials and security forces “complicit in human rights abuses” being allowed into the country and about the administration lifting Cuba’s designation as a “not fully cooperating” country on counterterrorism efforts despite it still being designated as a SSOT.

“The only reasonable motivation for removing this designation would be to mollify the regime that continues to harbor terrorists and U.S. fugitives and support militant groups in the region,” they said.

Meanwhile, Gimenez most recently announced that “nearly 115 Castro regime agents are already living in the United States,” including “high-ranking Communist Party officials, judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement.”

Biden-Harris parole programs are allowing “these agents to commit fraud against the United States and enter into our communities,” he said in a newsletter to constituents. He also said “Castro agents” illegally living in the U.S. were committing immigration fraud.

The Republican lawmakers’ warnings come after a former Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council and as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia pleaded guilty to secretly acting for decades as an agent of the Cuban regime and after Gimenez and others raised the alarm about Chinese spies operating in Cuba.

The Rubio delegation also reiterated concerns Gimenez has expressed about why the administration has invited Cuban foreign agents to tour high-level government facilities, which they argue poses a national security threat.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has also called on U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to stop the agency’s “continued support of Cuba’s communist interests” by reversing previous banking prohibitions. Scott has led another delegation calling on the administration to deny visas “to evil dictators from Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.”

“Rather than compelling the Cuban dictatorship to end its human rights abuses and bring democracy to the island, the Biden-Harris Administration has only looked for opportunities to pacify the regime and mend diplomatic relations,” the Rubio delegation said to Blinken.

The visa expansion is part of an outworking of President Joe Biden’s support of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection formalized in 2022, The Center Square reported. It’s also an outworking of Biden’s stated goal to facilitate more foreign nationals coming to the U.S. at a North American Summit in Washington, D.C. in 2021.

By September 2022, the State Department announced it was expanding visa services to Cubans “to facilitate safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration,” expanding “regular pathways available to Cubans wishing to come to the United States,” and expanding a family unification parole program. It also increased personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Havana and by early 2023 resumed “full immigrant visa processing for the first time since 2017.”

Through the U.S.-Cuba Migration Accords, the State Department pledged to “ensure that total legal migration to the United States from Cuba will be a minimum of 20,000 Cubans” per year.

This is in addition to 109,000 Cubans released into the U.S. through a CHNV parole program created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Cubans are also among the top nationalities released into the U.S. through a CBP One mobile app, with all nationalities combined, they total more than 765,000.

These programs are illegal, attorneys general, including Moody, who sued to stop them, and Republican members of Congress, argue.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, CBP and Border Patrol agents apprehended 660,764 Cuban illegal border crossers from fiscal 2021 through the end of July, according to federal data. The majority were not deported. U.S. Coast Guard crews have apprehended and repatriated thousands of Cubans, The Center Square has reported.