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The Cuban regime has spent decades using front groups to infiltrate, corrupt, and radicalize Americans. Today, I'm sanctioning the leadership of ICAP, which is one of the primary organizations involved in these efforts—including convicted Cuban spy Fernando González Llort—and nine entities that sustain and fund the regime's repressive apparatus.
Anyone supporting, sponsoring, or providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of being sanctioned themselves. Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to, or hold funds for, these entities should take immediate action to cease their support.
https://x.com/SecRubio/status/2090503929884983576
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Imposing Sanctions on Cuban Regime Actors Associated with Marxist Subversive Networks and Corrupt Economic Dealings
Press Statement
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
August 20, 2026
The Cuban regime has long sponsored a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalizing subversives, largely operating under the pretext of educational or cultural exchange. Just days ago, the regime attempted to use Communist kingpin and despot Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday to reinvigorate this subversive network, ferrying a new brigade of international sympathizers to Havana to network with regime officials. The Trump Administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms—none of which are afforded to its people—by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and Communist violence across the world.
Pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order (E.O.) 14404 of May 1, 2026, “Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and for Threats to United States National Security and Foreign Policy,” today, I am designating three leaders of the sanctioned Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), including ICAP President Fernando González Llort. Llort, a convicted Cuban spy who served 15 years in U.S. prison for his role in the infamous Wasp Network — a massive illegal Cuban spy ring uncovered in Florida in the late 1990s – has continued his efforts to destabilize the United States following his return to Cuba through his involvement with ICAP. ICAP was previously designated under E.O. 14404 for being a political subdivision, agency, or instrumentality, of the Government of Cuba. It hosts international brigades at facilities across Cuba, including Campamento Internacional Julio Antonio Mella (CIJAM), Casa Memorial Salvador Allende, and Casa de la Amistad, which I have identified as alternative addresses of ICAP and are to be treated as sanctioned property.
I am also designating nine entities, including the Ministry of Construction of Cuba, that sustain the regime’s repressive apparatus through control of key economic sectors.
Today’s designations make clear that the Trump Administration will not tolerate the Cuban regime’s efforts to fund its repression or continue its decades-long campaign of subversive anti-American activities.
The Department’s actions are being taken pursuant to E.O. 14404, which authorizes sweeping sanctions on Cuba, including against persons who support the Cuban regime’s security apparatus and those responsible for repression in Cuba and other threats to U.S. national security. These actions also further both E.O. 14380, “Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba” and National Security Presidential Memorandum 5, which directs the Executive Branch to improve human rights, encourage the rule of law, foster free markets and free enterprise, and promote democracy in Cuba. For more information on today’s action, see the Department of State’s Fact Sheet.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/08/imposing-sanctions-on-cuban-regime-actors-associated-with-marxist-subversive-networks-and-corrupt-economic-dealings/