Trump sanctions Cuban police, intelligence agencies under new crackdown

President Donald Trump’s new Cuba crackdown moved beyond state-owned businesses and into the island’s security apparatus, with Washington sanctioning the Ministry of the Interior, the national police and the intelligence directorate in a bid to squeeze the institutions that keep Havana’s government in power.

The action, announced May 18, came under Executive Order 14404, which Trump signed on May 1 and tied to a national emergency first declared in January. The order gives the administration broad authority to block property, target sectors of Cuba’s economy and impose secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions that do business with sanctioned parties, a warning aimed well beyond Havana and at banks and companies that help move money.

The State Department said it was sanctioning 11 Cuban regime-aligned actors and three entities: the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba, known as MININT, the Policia Nacional Revolucionaria, and the Directorate of Intelligence of Cuba. MININT oversees Cuba’s police, internal security forces, intelligence services and prison system. The police force was accused of operating mobile prisons and violently suppressing protests, underscoring that Washington’s focus is now as much on coercive control as on the country’s economy.

The list of individual targets included Cuba’s communications minister, Mayra Arevich Marin, along with senior political and military figures such as Juan Esteban Lazo Hernandez, Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda, Joaquin Quintas Sola and Raul Villar Kessel. Earlier in the month, the administration had already sanctioned Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A., the military-controlled conglomerate known as GAESA, along with Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera and Moa Nickel SA. Officials said additional designations could follow in the days and weeks ahead.

The broader strategy is clear. Washington is trying to choke off the assets and resource channels that support Cuba’s security services and military-linked elite, while also pressuring the island through efforts to block most oil shipments from Venezuela. The result has been mounting strain inside Cuba, including fuel shortages and power outages, but it is not yet clear that the campaign will change the balance of power in Havana.

Cuban officials rejected the measures outright. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called them “collective punishment” and said they were extraterritorial and violated the U.N. Charter. President Miguel Diaz-Canel warned that any U.S. military action against Cuba would lead to a “bloodbath” with incalculable consequences. For now, the sanctions look less like a short-term bargaining tool than a sign that Trump is reviving a hard-line Cuba policy aimed at domestic political audiences while leaving the island’s underlying conditions largely intact.