The Biden administration announced new sanctions on Friday against Cuba's national revolutionary police and its top two officials as the U.S. looks to increase pressure on the communist government following this month's protests on the island.
The Police Nacional Revolcionaria and the agency's director and deputy director, Oscar Callejas Valcarce and Eddie Sierra Arias, were targeted in the latest sanctions announced by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The police are part of Cuba's interior ministry, which was already the subject of a blanket designation by the Trump administration back in January.
The White House meeting comes almost three weeks after unusual July 11 protests in which thousands of Cubans took to the streets in Havana and other cities to protest shortages, power outages and government policies. They were the first such protests since the 1990s. “The Treasury Department will continue to designate and call out by name those who facilitate the Cuban regime's involvement in serious human rights abuse,” said Andrea Gacki, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Today's action serves to further hold accountable those responsible for suppressing the Cuban people's calls for freedom and respect for human rights.”
White House officials said Biden would discuss the new sanctions as well as ways to potentially establish internet access for the Cuban people. Some U.S. leaders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have said the White House should do something to maintain internet service in Cuba, including using balloons as Wi-Fi access points for the population.
The proposal would have to be cleared by the Cuban government, however, and it is not at all clear it would agree.
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