Joe Biden’s decision to remove Cuba from a list of state supporters of terrorism, which was announced days earlier as part of an agreement to liberate detainees, was swiftly overturned by US President Donald Trump on Monday.
The White House announced that Trump has revoked a lengthy list of executive directives, including the Cuba decision, in a statement released just hours after the inauguration.
In its last days last week, the Biden administration promised to free 553 individuals, including Cubans imprisoned during a crackdown on infrequent major rallies in 2021, in exchange for removing Cuba from the list, which significantly hinders foreign investment.
Cuba has released detainees, including Daniel Ferrer, the leader of the resistance.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said that Trump was acting out of “arrogance and disregard for the truth.”
“This is not surprising. His goal is to keep accelerating the cruel economic war against Cuba with a goal of domination,” he wrote on X.
In 2021, during his last days in office, Trump himself decided to reinstate Cuba on the list, undoing a reconciliation initiative started by former President Barack Obama.
The White House did not explain why it was overturning Biden’s directive or if it anticipated that the action would affect prisoners who had been released.
But new Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American staunchly opposed to the communist island’s government, told his confirmation hearing last week that he had “zero doubt” that Cuba belonged on the list.
The last Trump administration in 2021 had also cited Cuba’s refusal to extradite back to Colombia members of the militant group ELN.
The arrest warrants were revoked after Colombia elected a socialist president, Gustavo Petro, but fighting with the ELN has resurfaced in recent days, killing at least 100 people.
During his confirmation hearing, Rubio stated that the FARC, another Colombian guerrilla group, “has had the full support of the Cuban regime throughout their entire existence” and that Cuba has been “openly friendly” to Hamas and Hezbollah, two Palestinian militant organizations that Washington has classified as terrorist organizations.
“We know as well that the Cuban regime, for example, hosts not one but two countries’ espionage stations within their national territory, 90 miles from the shores of the United States,” Rubio said.
Only three other countries are on the list of state sponsors of terror: Iran, North Korea and Syria, where longtime leader Bashar al-Assad was toppled last month.
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