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Solidarity Under Siege

Humanitarian aid convoy members returning from Cuba stopped, searched, and questioned by US Customs and Border Protection officers.

The potential penalty for trying to help the Cuban people amid the Trump administration’s unprecedented economic crackdown, bellicose threats, and oil blockade became clear for two dozen American citizens returning home last week after participating in an international humanitarian aid convoy. Arriving from Havana to make connecting flights at the Miami International Airport, they were stopped, searched and questioned about their activities in Cuba for more than two hours by US Customs and Border Protection officers. At least 18 travelers had their cell phones, tablets, laptops, and Kindles seized. While agents returned a handful of devices at the airport, they retained the bulk of the electronics, saying they’d mail them in the coming days.

It bears repeating that travel to Cuba and carrying desperately needed medicine and food is entirely legal. A record 638,000 Americans traveled to the island in 2018 for any of several permitted purposes enshrined in US law, including “support for the Cuban people.” Nevertheless, certain restrictions—tourism must not be the purpose of the visit; Americans can stay only in private homes or the few hotels approved by the US government; they must not bring home rum or cigars—have become settled law, unless Congress acts, since activists lost a series of legal challenges going back to the 1980s, according to human rights and immigration lawyers.

However, the apparent targeting of convoy participants seeking to support the Cuban people amid the current heightened tensions suggests that border police are focused on something beyond ferreting out contraband bottles of Havana Club, lawyers say.

“It is clearly meant to harass,” said Stanley Cohen, a human rights and criminal defense lawyer in New York City whose name and number were carried by many members of the convoy, speaking to The Nation. “This is designed to intimidate and…to send a political message from law enforcement and from the US Department of Justice.”

“I regard a lot of this as just harassment,” added Ira Kurzban, an immigration lawyer in Miami. “It’s sending a message: If you go to Cuba and come back, we’re going to harass you.”

The maximum civil penalty for, say, staying in a prohibited Havana hotel, is $111,000, with the criminal maximum set at $250,000 and up to 20 years in prison—though lawyers say actual sentences would likely be far lower. Yet the price of losing a phone or laptop for several days or weeks when so much of our lives depends on data stored there can feel steep indeed. Convoy participants were stranded in Miami without access........

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