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A new law authored by me and passed by Congress in February 2026 punishes countries that are complicit in the human trafficking of Cuban doctors by way of the Castro regime’s medical missions abroad. The same law for the fiscal year 2027 is expected to be voted on in the House soon.
For decades, the Cuban dictatorship has made billions by coercing its medical professionals to work in places no one wants to go, under the worst labor conditions.
But the doctors themselves see very little of that money. The regime on the island earns an estimated $4-8 billion per year from the program, and regime operatives keep 75-95% of what the doctors are paid.
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The U.S. State Department says the regime confiscates the doctors’ passports, forces their families to stay in Cuba as leverage, assigns handlers to watch them and punishes families if a doctor defects.
A picture shows Cuban embroidery on the white coat of a member of a delegation of Cuban doctors after their arrival at the Martinique-Aime-Cesaire airport in Le Lamentin, on the French Caribbean island of Martinique on June 26, 2020. (Photo by LIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
Since 2010, State Department reports have called the program exploitative. Appropriately, State labeled the practice “human trafficking” or “forced labor” run by the Cuban regime in 2020.
A new provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 targets countries that pay the authoritarian dictatorship for these exploited medical workers. The State Department must now list every country or group that pays for these personnel and notify them they’re on the list.
If a country stays on the list for two years in a row, it loses all U.S. foreign aid. Foreign officials involved can be banned from entering the United States, and their finances and property here may also be frozen.
The law is already obtaining results. Guatemala, Jamaica, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Paraguay and Honduras are reducing or outright ending their use of Cuban doctors.
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Some, like the Bahamas, are changing terms by trying to pay doctors directly instead of paying the regime – something the dictatorship has rejected before. Consequently, the Trump administration has enforced this law by imposing visa restrictions on officials from Brazil, Grenada and some African countries tied to the program.
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This legislation ensures accountability, something that past Democratic administrations were willing to overlook. It exposes those who benefit from the program and hits them with real punitive consequences: the loss of U.S. aid, travel bans and financial sanctions. The law also strongly supports the oppressed Cuban people by protecting Cuban doctors from exploitation and abuse, while cutting off a critical financial lifeline to the regime.
