USCG warns against illegally entering Cuban waters; officials address mass exodus possibility

The U.S. Coast Guard has issued a new warning to those who try to illegally enter Cuban waters and come back to the U.S.

“Entering Cuban territorial seas and returning to the U.S. without the proper permit is illegal. Vessels or persons attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully by sea will be stopped and repatriated to their country of origin or the country they departed from,” the coast guard said in a post on X.

Officials also recently reminded the public that American vessels require a permit to enter Cuban territorial waters, and they’ll only be accepting applications “accompanied by an approved special license from the Department of Commerce,” in line with a 2019 regulation.

The posts on X come in the wake of social, political and economic crises facing the island, crises that some officials are concerned may lead to another mass exodus.

“Are we prepared for any kind of humanitarian crisis in Cuba, the possible flow of refugees or other civil disorder that may threaten our interest, especially if the decrepit, corrupt Castro regime finally falls or flees?” U.S. Sen. Thomas Cotton (R-Ark.) asked during a Q&A at the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 19.

SouthCom Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan replied that he had “an execute order to be prepared to support DHS in a mass migration event.”

“They would take the lead. We would follow either at sea or primarily ashore at Guantanamo Bay, where we would set up a camp to deal with those migrants or any overflow from any situation in Cuba itself,” Donovan said.

He added that there are plans to protect the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, along with the Americans living on the eastern part of the island.

The warning also comes after an incident in late February in which the Cuban government said 10 heavily armed Cubans from the U.S. who were on board a Florida-flagged speedboat opened fire on soldiers in waters off the island’s north coast. It said that Cuban soldiers returned fire, killing four suspects.

Cuba said the men intended to infiltrate the island to commit acts of terrorism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he wasn’t “going to speculate about whose boat it was, what they were doing, why they were there, what actually happened.”

Orlando Gutierrez, the co-founder and spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a nonprofit that joins opposition groups in the exile community, said mass exoduses from the island follow a pattern.

“Historically, over these 67 years… the rebellion of the Cuban people in the face of the Castro dictatorship has always been the reason why the communist regime has promoted mass exoduses, to take off internal pressure and put pressure on the United States,” Gutierrez said in Spanish. “What’s happening now is that there’s an American government that won’t allow the regime to wash its dirty laundry outside of Cuba.”

U.S. containment plans focusing on Cuban exoduses date back to 1959.

Since then, the U.S. has seen mass migration events including the Camarioca boatlift in 1965, the Freedom Flights (1965-1973), the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis.

The current exodus that began four years ago in 2022 is the largest yet in the island’s history, accounting for 850,000 Cuban immigrants.

But one former Cuban political prisoner says that sort of mobilization of migrants is an empty threat, a tactic the island’s government uses to pressure the U.S. to help restore order.

“It’s absolutely false that a massive exodus from Cuba could exist,” Luis Zúñiga told NBC6 in Spanish. “In Cuba, there’s nothing that floats available to the public, not rafts, there’s no cameras, no cars, there’s no boats. So this is nothing more than propaganda to threaten the United States and get them to give up on freeing Cuba.”

Either way, SouthCom says it is prepared to carry out orders from the White House.