Rubio questions planned visit by Cuban Border Guard delegation to Washington next week

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio urged President Joe Biden on Friday to “immediately” cancel a trip by members of the Cuban Border Guard and diplomats from the island to visit the U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Washington and tour port facilities in North Carolina next week.

In a letter sent Friday, the Florida senator highlighted that the Cuban Border Guard, which acts as the country’s coast guard, is part of Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior, which is under U.S. sanctions for human-rights violations.

Rubio, a senior member of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs committee and vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, also suggested the delegation might include Cuban spies.

“There is also a high likelihood that the delegation will include members of Cuba’s intelligence agencies,” he wrote, adding that the invitation “to Cuban intelligence operatives into sensitive national security facilities in order to share with them our nation’s coastal and maritime security protocols is an egregious dereliction of duty that betrays one of the most fundamental tenets of the oath you have sworn, to protect America from foreign enemies.

“You must cancel this visit immediately, and explain to the American people how this was allowed to happen on your watch,” he added.

Rubio said Congress was notified that the visit had been planned by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. A State Department spokesperson told the Miami Herald: “We have nothing to confirm at this time.”

The Biden administration resumed migration talks and law enforcement cooperation dialogues with Cuba, prompted by the largest mass migration event from the island in several decades. While most of the more than 300,000 Cubans who came to the United States in 2022 crossed the border with Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard also had to respond to a dramatic increase of Cuban migrants trying to reach South Florida shores.

Over the decades, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Cuban border guard have forged a strong cooperation that has been kept below the radar at times of diplomatic tension to avoid criticism. In moments of crisis, the relationship has served as a communication channel between the two governments, according to the account of a former U.S. State Department official who asked not to be identified to speak of the sensitive matter.

Several reports sent to Congress by the State Department on the compliance of Cuban migration accords, written between 2017 and 2021 and reviewed by the Herald, include a line stating that the two coast guards “routinely cooperate in all aspects of Cuban maritime migration.” That includes “active target hand-off’ operations” in which the Cuban Border Guard “pursues a vessel until it leaves Cuba’s territorial waters and then allows the USCG to interdict the vessel.” Such incidents “are common,” according to an October 2017 report. Between October 2016 and September 2017, the Cuban Border Guard conducted 37 such operations.

While the Biden administration is keen on addressing the migration crisis, inviting Cuban officials to tour the U.S. might trigger criticism from Cuban exiles, especially after recent events in which survivors of a collision at sea say their boat was rammed by a Cuban coast guard vessel.

Cuban authorities have said the collision was an accident, while some survivors told the media that they were pressed to change their initial statements.