Rubio urges FBI to investigate Cuba’s ties to U.S.-based anti-embargo group Bridges of Love

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is urging the FBI to open an “immediate” investigation into a U.S. anti-embargo group whose members recently met Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, claiming that they are acting as unregistered foreign agents of the Cuban government.

In a letter sent Monday to the FBI and obtained by the Miami Herald, Rubio, a Cuban-American Republican from Florida, urged FBI Director Christopher Wray to investigate the members and activities of Puentes de Amor — Bridges of Love — stressing the group has “well-known associations with the Cuban regime.”

The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people and entities working as “agents” acting under the direction of foreign governments or organizations to register with the U.S. Department of Justice. Activities that require registration include political work intended to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Carlos Lazo, a Cuba-born high school Spanish teacher in Seattle who founded Puentes de Amor, has been granted unprecedented access to Cuba’s top officials. He met Cuba leader Miguel Díaz-Canel twice, in June and August last year, in widely publicized visits covered by the island’s state media. The publicity also put the organization on the radar of Cuban-American politicians in the U.S.

Rubio’s letter comes after the organization staged an anti-embargo rally in Coral Gables on Sunday. In his letter, the senator said the demonstration was “part of a coordinated effort by the Cuban regime to sow division, incite conflict, and influence the foreign policy of the United States.”

During the demonstration, the group flew flags of Fidel Castro’s July 26th movement, which provoked the ire of Cuban exile activists staging a counterprotest. One exile who burned a July 26 flag was arrested. Another who protested the arrest was detained, too.

Lazo called the counterprotesters “haters” in a Facebook live-streamed video.

Rubio said the group flew the July 26th movement’s flag “in open support of the Cuban Revolution that ultimately led to the communist dictatorship which remains in place today.”

Díaz-Canel thanked the group for the Sunday rally, which he said showed that “Cuba is not alone.”

“The FBI should acknowledge the group and its members for what they are — malign foreign actors inside the United States — and conduct investigations of individuals who may be acting as foreign agents of the Cuban regime,” the senator wrote.

Lazo did not immediately reply to voice and text messages left by the Herald seeking comment.

Bridges of Love, registered in the state of Washington as a nonprofit in November 2020, advocates against the U.S. “blockade,” borrowing the term used by the Cuban government to refer to the embargo. They have also asked the Biden administration to eliminate Cuba from the list of countries that sponsored terrorism.

“President Biden: Are you blind? Are you deaf? Have you lost touch with reality? I tell you that just ninety miles from our shores, there’s an attempt to suffocate, kill, and eradicate a peaceful and noble people from the face of the earth,” Lazo wrote in the organization’s blog. “For more than sixty years, the United States has waged an economic war against Cuba. That war generates poverty, death and desolation in the Cuban family.”

The organization also favors the expansion of travel and remittances to Cuba and reopening the family reunification program, all measures already taken by the Biden administration.

The group has organized small rallies and caravans throughout the U.S. to call attention to its cause. Lazo has also taken American students to the island.

Lazo has long been a member of what the Cuban government refers to as the “solidarity movement” with the island. In 2004, while he was in Iraq serving as a medic with the National Guard from Washington state, he made a video calling on Congress to allow him to visit his two sons in Cuba, at a time President George W. Bush had imposed severe restrictions on traveling to the island. In 2007, the activist testified before the U.S. Senate Finance committee against those restrictions. In that hearing, Lazo said he came to the U.S. in 1991 in a raft.

The Cuban government has used the organization in propaganda efforts to convince domestic audiences that it has support within the U.S., a strategy previously followed by Fidel Castro with U.S. far-left organizations such as Pastors for Peace.

“Most Cubans in the United States want #BridgesofLove to be built and sanctions lifted,” Cuba’s presidential office tweeted after Lazo’s most recent visit.

Díaz-Canel has frequently published items on social media about the group, which has delivered humanitarian donations to the island. He has tweeted pictures of himself with Lazo, and he turned the name of the group, #PuentesdeAmor, into a hashtag that his followers and several government accounts have adopted.

The organization also received a shout-out from Díaz-Canel during his July 26 speech, along with other U.S. groups like Alianza Martiana and Code Pink that have expressed support for the Cuban government.

“What you are doing, in addition to the contribution in aid, in solidarity, is also an awakening of consciences; that in the end is what makes the movement stronger,” Diaz-Canel told Lazo, according to a recount of the most recent meeting published in the presidential office’s website.

A picture of Lazo with Emily Mendrala, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of Cuban affairs, was also featured on Cuban state media. She is seen holding one of the booklets delivered by Lazo during a meeting in July last year containing signatures in support of lifting U.S. sanctions.

Rubio also tweeted at the time about the meeting, referring to Puentes de Amor as “a pro-regime front group.”