Cuban agents in U.S. military headquarters? ‘Not on my watch’ says Florida U.S. senator

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“I gotta talk to you about Cuba.” Viewers wondered what President Joe Biden meant by that comment to his colleague, caught on a hot microphone after the State of the Union address. Now we can guess what the president was hinting at: a plan to further reestablish ties with the Cuban regime, starting with inviting its security agents to observe security procedures at a working U.S. port.

The administration notified Congress of that invitation last Friday afternoon. I’m sure Biden and the regime apologists in his administration hoped their announcement would go unnoticed, but they were out of luck. The Cuban Border Guard and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are high-level entities in a dictatorship classified as a state sponsor of terrorism. Inviting those agents to tour a sensitive U.S. site is, simply put, unconscionable.

Listening to pro-Cuba activists in the United States, you would think Cuba is just a poor country and that establishing closer ties with its communist regime would benefit both parties. But the regime is one of our greatest regional adversaries. It undermines democratic order and provides safe haven to American fugitives and terrorists, like Joanne Chesimard, Guillermo Morales, Charlie Hill and Victor Manuel Gerena. Moreover, Cuban spies are working to infiltrate our ranks and harm our nation.

If anyone doubts the regime’s intentions, they should look at how it treats its own people. Since the historic “J-11” protests of July 2021, the dictatorship has unjustly detained dozens of Cuban citizens every month. Cuba now has more than 1,000 political prisoners, and if the brutal beating of democracy activist José Daniel Ferrer is any indication, their suffering is great. This regime does not mean well — not for the Cuban people, and certainly not for the United States.

That’s why I demanded the president cancel the planned visit. Would we be so naïve as to welcome the Chinese Communist Party to tour our naval bases? Would we invite the Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation cartels to learn how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detects and stops shipments of drugs at the southern border?

It’s impossible to justify bringing agents of an adversarial regime, especially one that works with terrorists and drug traffickers such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), also in Colombia, to spy on a U.S. port.

The administration’s plan is especially disturbing to Florida’s Cuban-American exile community, which knows the danger of the dictatorship all too well. But it should bother all Americans. This is the same regime that arbitrarily confiscated property from U.S. citizens under Fidel Castro. Now we extend the red carpet and welcome its agents to our shores?

Floridians rely on maritime and port security to protect us from both the geopolitical threat posed by Cuba, which lies only 90 miles from our shores, and the illegal importation of drugs, including deadly fentanyl. Sharing coastal and maritime security protocols with the Cuban regime is an egregious betrayal of our state.

So why has the president committed this obvious blunder? He could be preparing to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list. President Obama did just that in 2015. I worked with President Trump to rightly reverse that edict, but Biden seems poised to repeat the mistakes of the past.

This administration is staffed by Obama-era holdovers acting as caretakers of America’s decline. These are the people who removed the FARC mercenaries from the foreign terrorist organization list in 2021; who lifted sanctions on the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes without justification.

Delisting Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism is the logical next step. In reality, it’s a terrible idea that policymakers should do everything in their power to prevent. It’s why I’ve reintroduced my FORCE Act, which would prohibit the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism until it satisfies certain conditions.

Meanwhile, those of us in Washington who still subscribe to common sense must protect our soil and ports from the agents of adversarial regimes. I hope this is something Congress can find bipartisan ground on. It’s the least Floridians and the Cuban-American community deserve.

Sen. Marco Rubio is Florida’s senior U.S. senator.