Trump Targets Cuba’s Power Structure In Sweeping Blow To Communist Elites

The Trump administration delivered a sweeping blow to the Cuban regime on Thursday, sanctioning its president, members of the Castro family dynasty, Cuba’s military ministry, and a gold mining operation that funnels wealth to regime elites.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has framed the Trump administration’s efforts as an existential campaign against a government he considers a direct threat to American security.

Secretary Rubio announced the designations under a May 1 executive order, targeting five Cuban entities and five individuals. At the top of the list: Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his wife, Lis Cuesta Peraza, along with their stepson — as well as Alejandro Castro Espín, the son of Raúl Castro and former head of Cuban intelligence, and Castro Espín’s son. The Castro name is now, once again, directly in Washington’s crosshairs.

“The Cuban people are the hostages of a brutal and repressive government,” Rubio declared. “Which disregards their safety and prosperity to advance the Castro regime’s true purpose: serving as an outpost for our adversaries and exporting radical left-wing violence and terror across our hemisphere.”

The sanctions also hit Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), which controls vast swaths of the Cuban economy through military-owned enterprises. Any entity owned 50% or more by MINFAR — or by the previously designated military holding company GAESA — is considered blocked as well, strangling the military cartel’s economic empire. Rubio has previously called GAESA “the heart of Cuba’s kleptocratic communist system.”

The State Department also sanctioned the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), a Fidel Castro-founded organization that U.S. officials say supports Cuban intelligence operations; the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Cuba’s neighborhood surveillance network; and Minera la Victoria, a Cuban-Australian gold mining joint venture whose profits flow directly to the regime.

Foreign banks and companies that continue doing business with any of the designated parties now face their own sanctions exposure — a warning shot aimed squarely at international firms still profiting from the regime.

“We will continue to take action,” Rubio had warned on X in early May, “until the regime takes all necessary political and economic reforms.”

Today’s sanctions demonstrate that the Trump Administration will not stand by while Cuba’s communist regime threatens our national security in our hemisphere. We will continue to take action until the regime takes all necessary political and economic reforms.

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 7, 2026