Cuba’s communist regime accused the United States of engaging in “discriminatory treatment” by allegedly refusing to allow Deputy Health Minister Tania Margarita Cruz to participate in an event for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional subsidiary of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), in Washington.
Deputy Minister Cruz further claimed that the U.S. government allegedly refused to issue U.S. visas to her delegation in Havana which, according to her, constitutes an “act of discrimination” against Cuba.
PAHO, an organization that for years has helped the Castro regime broker Cuban slave doctor deals with other countries in the region, is presently holding its 62nd Directing Council in Washington, DC. The event started on Monday, September 29, and will run through Friday, October 29.
Cruz, a member of the Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee since 2021, spoke to the regime-run propaganda outlet Prensa Latina to denounce the “discrimination against Cuba” allegedly committed by the United States. Cruz explained to the state-run outlet that she traveled to New York as part of the Castro regime’s delegation for last week’s 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly but that “the U.S. government took advantage of the requirement for a travel permit to prevent me from participating as head of the Cuban delegation to this 62nd Governing Council.”
The regime official further claimed that the U.S. “prevented” her delegation from participating after its members did not receive a U.S. visa in Havana.
“This action constitutes discrimination against Cuba, a country that is a full and active member of PAHO. Far from fulfilling its obligations as host country, the United States is taking advantage of that status to try to silence Cuba’s voice, aware that it has no legitimate arguments to disagree with our positions,” Cruz said.
The communist official claimed that Cuba is not just an active PAHO member state, but also the “nation that has contributed the most in the hemisphere to guaranteeing regional health coverage.” Cruz further asserted that both the W.H.O. and PAHO have “endorsed and praised” Cuba’s public health policies and programs.
In recent months, the administration of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have imposed visa restrictions on Cuban regime officials and officials from other nations that have engaged in the communist regime’s decades-old slave doctor scheme — one of the most profitable sources of income for the Castro regime.
For years, the Castro regime signed so-called “medical mission” deals with other nations, sending thousands of Cuban slave doctors to countries around the world. The slave doctors receive only a minimal fraction of what each country pays for their labor, while the Castro regime pockets the majority of it, using it to fund its brutal repression of Cuban citizens at home. The slave doctors are forced into inhumane treatment during their labor. The Castro regime heavily punishes slave doctors who defect from the program with an eight-year ban from entering their own country under penalty of prison.
“This scheme enriches the corrupt Cuban regime while depriving the Cuban people of essential medical care,” the State Department told Breitbart News in August.
Deputy Minister Cruz levied her “discrimination” accusations against the United States hours before the State Department published its 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report. Cuba maintained its “Tier 3” classification, the lowest available, due to the Castro regime’s ongoing trafficking of its own people. Other countries such as Brazil and South Africa were downgraded in the report to a “Tier 2” classification due to their failures to demonstrate progress against trafficking.
In the report, the State Department noted that Cuba, under the Castro regime, is one of the countries that exploits its own citizens in forced labor, describing the slave doctor scheme as “state-sponsored human trafficking.” The State Department detailed that the Castro regime generated $4.9 billion in revenue from the slave doctor scheme in 2022 alone, the most recent year for which data is available.
“The government of Cuba does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. Cuba remained on Tier 3. During the reporting period there was a ‘government policy or pattern’ of forced labor in the government’s labor export program, which included medical missions, from which the regime profited,” the report read.
The report stated that although the Castro regime “took some steps” to address trafficking, including convicting cases of child trafficking, the regime recruited and deployed Cuban workers using deception and threats of retaliation.
“The regime exerted undue control over Cuban workers working in foreign countries and placed unreasonable restrictions on their movements that did not appear to align with international standards on the health and safety of workers,” the State Department said in the report. “Regime authorities kept a significant amount of most workers’ wages, confiscated workers’ passports and professional credentials, did not consistently inform participants of the terms of their contracts, and subjected workers to surveillance and strict curfews.”
The State Department, in its detailed breakdown of Cuba, stressed that the regime bans and heavily punishes “deserters” of its slave doctor program, detailing that the regime brands them as “emigrated,” a designation that strips them of custodial rights over their children, loss of any property, and are stripped of other citizen rights.
“According to an international NGO, by 2021, the Cuban regime had sanctioned 40,000 regime-affiliated workers under these provisions. In 2022, there were approximately 5,000 children forcibly separated from their parents due to the regime’s provisions for the program,” the report read.
The State Department noted that there were approximately 26,000 Cuban slave workers in more than 55 countries as of the beginning of 2025 — all of whom had between 75 and 95 percent of their wages confiscated by the Castro regime. The rest is allegedly given to each slave doctor via a deposit in a Cuban bank account in local currency instead of the one that the host state used to pay the regime. The doctors can only access the funds at the end of their “mission,” or partially after 11 months of service, but only if they are in Cuba.
The report also made special mention of the fraudulent and often deceptive practices that have led to Cuban nationals being recruited by Russian-affiliated entities to fight for Russia in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, citing the case of two Cubans who denounced being allegedly deceived into fighting in the war as example.
The State Department pointed out that although the slave doctor scheme is the Castro regime’s most profitable one, it has similarly coercive programs in other areas such as education, sports, construction, and arts through approximately 85 state-affiliated entities, listing known confirmed reports of exploitation and forced labor of Cubans in other countries such as Angola.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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