The Cuban people are rising up in protest against a brutal, authoritarian regime. This month’s protests mark the most significant rejection yet of the communist dictatorship’s rule on the island. It’s a historic moment and, more importantly, the right time for America to rally the world in support of Cubans rightfully demanding their God-given liberties and the end of a dictatorship.
But, with its back more up against the wall than ever before, the evil Castro-Diaz-Canel regime is looking for ways out. And like trapped rats, its leaders are signaling a desperate return to their old playbook: encouraging mass migration to the United States.
The Cuban people have long suffered under the oppressive rule of the Castro brothers as well as their puppet leader Miguel Diaz-Canel, and we understand how their struggle leads people to risk their lives on makeshift rafts, known in Spanish as “balsas,” to cross 90 miles of open ocean to America. But that is not what’s happening here.
Instead, what we’re seeing is a communist regime with nothing to lose threatening to push people off the island as “punishment” to the U.S. Life under communist authoritarianism is never good, but in Cuba, when things get really bad, the regime decides to use the lives of thousands of Cubans as blackmail. It threatens to send 50,000 innocent Cubans in boats to America if sanctions are not lifted.
In doing so, it risks the lives of Cubans in an unsafe journey that has tragically killed too many over the past six decades.
How do we know this? Because the communist regime has done this before — twice.
In 1994 the regime launched an exodus of balseros (rafters), and in 1980 it launched the Mariel boatlift. Especially with the latter, dictator Fidel Castro was merciless in his efforts to empty Cuba’s jails of people he labeled “undesirable:” alleged criminals, islanders struggling with mental illness, and Cubans who were gay.
To be clear, this is the same criminal dictatorship with whom many on the Left continue to insist our government must “normalize” relations. But there is nothing normal about this regime.
We cannot allow the Cuban regime to hold yet another human rights crisis over our heads. President Joe Biden must speak directly to this threat. His response so far has been equivocating and slow-moving. Today, he needs to be abundantly clear that we will take the encouragement of any mass migration as a hostile act against the Cuban people and the U.S. This cannot be tolerated.
There can be no room for ambiguity here. If the Cuban dictatorship triggers a mass migration event and threatens the lives of thousands of its own people in such a perilous process, it should prepare for a commensurate response to protect those Cubans’ lives.
That is the message Biden should have sent the day the Cuban protests began. It’s also the message that the administration should have sent to Central America as innocent people rushed our southern border, and it’s the message Biden needs to send for any intentional mass migrant event going forward.
All of these events put thousands of people’s lives at risk, and they will have direct repercussions for people here as well. When foreign governments actively work to encourage these migrations, they should face consequences. No government should be allowed to hold a knife to the necks of its own people and believe it will get away with it. It’s time for Biden to rise to the occasion and make that clear.
Marco Rubio is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.
