Trump admin says it won’t hold migration talks with Cuba

Cuba says it will continue receiving deportation flights from the U.S. based on a previous accord between the two countries, even though the State Department says it has no plans to hold migration talks with the island’s government.

But the suspension of migration talks comes as President Donald Trump continues to crack down on immigrants and carry out what he calls the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. It’s not clear how the Trump administration plans larger scale repatriations of Cubans without legal immigration status.

A State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement to NBC News that “the Trump Administration will no longer engage the Cuban regime for the sole sake of engagement and endless dialogue.” 

“We have nothing to preview at this time,” the statement said.

When asked about the Trump administration’s comments, the Cuban government told NBC News it will continue to abide by 2017 migration accords it negotiated with then-President Barack Obama. At the time, the Cuban government agreed to accept deportations on a case-by-case basis.

But the monthly flights usually have less than 100 people, far below the mass deportations Trump has vowed to carry out. Deportations on a larger scale would have to be negotiated between the two countries. 

“Bilateral migration talks are not part of the agreements, and they can be carried out even without talks. In fact, they have been a convenient vehicle to aid their implementation, and both governments have determined for most of the past few years that they are useful for mutually defined objectives,” Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio told NBC News in an emailed response to questions.

“It is known that, despite the persistent unilateral hostility of the United States, Cuba is willing to meet to ensure the objectives that both countries have defined regarding migration,” de Cossio said.

Migration meetings between the two counties have taken place since the 1990s, though they were suspended under the George W. Bush administration and under the first Trump administration. The countries resumed migration talks in 2022 under the Biden administration amid a historic wave of Cuban migrants entering the U.S.

Cubans were among the largest groups of migrants in recent years. U.S. Customs and Border Protection registered over 600,000 encounters with Cubans from fiscal years 2022 to 2024. That number has now dropped dramatically.

As part of the 2017 accords, Obama agreed to end the “wet foot, dry foot” policy that allowed Cubans who arrived on United States soil without visas to remain in the country legally and gain residency. The Obama administration also eliminated the Cuban Medical Parole program under which Cuban medical professionals on missions overseas could defect and get fast-tracked visas to the United States.

The Trump administration ended a Biden-era parole program that gave temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of applicants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, though it’s been temporarily blocked by a judge.

Trump terminated the Biden-era CBP One app that allowed migrants to remain in the U.S. for two years, and this month told them to leave the country immediately. Over 900,000 people were allowed in the country using the app from January 2023 until Trump closed it down on his first day in office. It’s not clear how many were Cuban.

Cuba has long said the U.S. incentivizes migration from the island by devastating its economy through heavy economic sanctions while making it easier for Cubans, in comparison to other groups, to gain residency and then citizenship.

De Cossio stressed that Cuba is “committed” to complying with the 2017 agreements.

But he added that “the strict implementation of the economic blockade remains in place,” referring to the decades-old U.S. embargo against Cuba, “which is recognized as an important factor in encouraging Cuban emigration, both regular and irregular, and explains the large presence of our nationals in the United States.”

“It applies a policy of economic warfare that depresses Cubans’ standard of living and drives them to emigrate,” de Cossio said.

He said the U.S. has used migration “for destabilization purposes against Cuba.”

“That is why we say it is neither fair nor realistic to propose a mass deportation of Cubans in the United States, who have been pushed by U.S. policy and also admitted and protected by U.S. policies. Most have made a life there, have jobs, properties, and family members, and it is not fair to deport them for a change of heart,” de Cossio said.

Official exchanges between the United States and Cuba under the Trump administration have been limited to contact between the two embassies as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cuba and the State Department to discuss specific issues, according to de Cossio. 

He said Cuba had summoned the chargé d’Affaires in Cuba, Mike Hammer, “to warn him about his conduct that is not what is expected of a diplomat.”

In the last months, Hammer has engaged with prominent political dissidents on the communist island, an issue that also came up during Trump’s first presidency as well.

“On the part of Cuba, there is a willingness to develop respectful and constructive relations with the United States, regardless of who is president, as long as the standards that should prevail in bilateral ties between sovereign countries are respected,” said de Cossio. “Today, that willingness does not appear to exist in Washington. The narrow and hostile priorities of anti-Cuban sectors incapable of accepting Cuba’s right to full sovereignty and self-determination prevail.”

De Cossio said he didn’t see a reason why it’s impossible to move toward a “civilized” relationship between the two countries and end what he categorized as “a long-standing, unjust, and highly asymmetrical conflict.”