Cuban Official Blames U.S. for Family Separations, Faces Backlash Over Cuba's Own Record Since 1959

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez took to social media platform X on Monday, accusing the United States of encouraging the separation of Cuban families. He directly blamed current Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Cuban-American politicians for tightening immigration policies against people from the island. "Anti-Cuban politicians, including the U.S. Secretary of State, are determined to further separate Cuban families. The damage caused by their economic strangulation measures isn't enough for them. They intimidate, threaten, and target Cuban migrants with ties to their homeland," Rodríguez wrote, accompanying his post with an image of a migrant being detained by ICE agents.

The message sparked a wave of criticism from Cuban users both inside and outside the island, who reminded the foreign minister that the Cuban regime has historically been the main culprit in family separations. "The dictatorship is primarily to blame for the separation of families," one user commented. "Decades of criminalizing dissent, mass exodus, endemic poverty, all results of a failed economic policy. Yet, the 'anti-Cubans' are those who don't agree with the regime's disastrous policies," pointed out another.

Since 1959, the communist regime has imposed migration, ideological, and political restrictions that have prevented millions of Cubans from reuniting with their families, leaving, or returning to their homeland. Even today, in 2025, the government continues to regulate entry to the island for Cuban citizens for political reasons and persists in punishing those who speak out against the system with exile and imprisonment. "The only ones responsible for separating Cuban families have been you. Since 1959, that damned revolution has been tearing families apart," read another comment.

Other users highlighted the hypocrisy of the official discourse: "For decades, this great nation [the U.S.] has offered us the second chance that the Castro regime denied us. For decades, we've fled, and the dictatorial regime has used these exoduses as a means of escaping the horrible situation that the Cuban people endure due to communism, which destroys families and dreams."

The instrumental use of family suffering by the regime was also emphasized: "It's very convenient for the dictatorship to have the separation and suffering of Cuban families. It's material gain. The rest doesn't matter to the regime: they rely on remittances, renting doctors, and donations." "Crying for dollars, as always." "There's no one more anti-Cuban than you."

Ultimately, while the regime points fingers at others, Cubans continue to live with the real consequences of a system that for over six decades has fractured the nation, both inside and outside the island, with repression, migration control, and a ruined economy.