Foreign Affairs

American Leftists’ Beloved Cuban Propaganda Agency Sanctioned By Trump Admin

[Wikimedia Commons/Public/Taymaz Valley from Ottawa, Canada, CC BY 2.0, <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>]

The Trump administration announced sanctions on Thursday against a Cuban agency that collaborates with American leftist groups.

Financial transactions between anyone in the U.S. and the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) are now illegal under new State Department designations of several entities, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. ICAP helps organize propagandistic field trips from America to Cuba in partnership with the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a U.S.-based group consisting of more than 60 member organizations, the DCNF previously reported.

For decades, Cuba has been the world capital for radical left-wing terrorism. The regime in Havana has recruited, trained and backed violent Marxist and third-worldist movements across our hemisphere and beyond. Today, we are targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba’s…

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) June 4, 2026

Cuba’s foreign affairs ministry and the NNOC did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

Late Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro created ICAP in 1960 to arrange for guests to visit Cuba as friendly indoctrination, according to American intelligence and Cuban state media. America’s pro-Cuba activist movement became one of its tools with the NNOC’s help.

In addition to fringe militia-like groups such as Armed Queers Salt Lake City and the Venceremos Brigade, the NNOC’s member list includes the Democratic Socialists of America and other high-profile American leftist groups.

ICAP’s president, former Cuban spy Fernando González Llort, praised American leftists for their help advocating against tough U.S. policy toward Cuba in a November speech on the NNOC’s YouTube channel. González was arrested in 1998 as part of a Cuban espionage network, convicted of spying on U.S. military installations and served about 15 years in prison, NBC News reported.

“The work you do from the United States is essential,” González told his NNOC audience. “Each approved local resolution, each caravan, each brigade, each communication piece that dismantles the lie, it is a sharp blow against the policy of asphyxiation.”

Rubio also sanctioned four other Cuban entities and five regime-linked figures, including Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. “Anyone providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of sanctions themselves,” he said in a Thursday X post. “Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to these entities should freeze those activities.”

El presidente de EE.UU hace nuevas declaraciones amenazadoras contra #Cuba; y el Departamento del Tesoro incorporó nuevos nombres de dirigentes, organizaciones y empresas cubanas a una lista ilegítima de sanciones.

Están dirigidas a reforzar las medidas de #bloqueo y el…

— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) June 4, 2026

“The entities and individuals designated today direct or fund the regime and its efforts to mobilize its radical revolutionary movements in the United States and around the world,” Rubio said.

Díaz-Canel called the sanctions “illegitimate” in a Thursday X post, according to a DCNF translation.

“This political blindness is added to the coercive measures applied in recent weeks against our country, designed to harm the Cuban people,” he said, according to the translation. “The aggressiveness and perversity of the Yankee government will clash with our determination to confront the worst scenarios and resist the imperialist onslaught.”

Lucas Alonso contributed to this story.