U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned over the weekend that a spy network run by Cuba’s communist Castro regime is undermining American interests.
On Fox News Channel’s My View with Lara Trump Sec. Rubio detailed that the Cuban regime is also linked to the rise of Antifa riots and similar violent protests that have taken place across America over the past years — emphasizing that the Cuban regime, which is 90 miles away from America’s shores, is a “failed state” and a national security threat to the U.S.
Rubio spoke with Fox News on Saturday on a wide array of topics, such as Cuba, Venezuela, China, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the ongoing conflict with Iran.
The interview came weeks after the U.S. State Department published a comprehensive 100-page report titled, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” The report contains an extensive account of the actions committed by the Castro regime against the United States throughout the nearly 70 years it has been in power.
The report also details how the Castro regime — which turned Cuba into a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) — established an espionage network with elements that are actively working inside the United States to undermine American national security. Sec. Rubio touched upon the subject of the Castro regime’s espionage network.
Sec. Rubio explained that, while the subject is not unfamiliar to those who have followed the issue of Cuba, the average American might see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off American shores, and forget that “when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they are an influence and espionage superpower.”
“If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them,” Sec. Rubio told Lara Trump.
Rubio referred to the case of Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador who pleaded guilty to being a Cuban regime spy and was sentenced in 2024 to 15 years in prison.
“We’ve had them penetrate the highest levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ana Belén Montes was one of the single biggest intelligence failures on the part of the United States and one of the biggest penetrations we ever had in our system,” Rubio continued.
Sec. Rubio explained to Fox News that, when it comes to foreign influence, every communist left-wing insurgency group that has destabilized governments across Latin America over the past 50 years has had support, help, and, “in many cases its birth, from a Cuban influence operation.”
“So, it was an important report just to highlight the role they play in our country, a very negative role,” Rubio said.
The Secretary of State emphasized that the Cuban regime’s network is the “same network of protesters around the country” that caused riots and burned streets in 2020 — which then flipped to pro-Hamas protests, and then to pro-Maduro protests, within 48 hours of the Venezuelan socialist dictator’s arrest in January. Rubio said that the same Cuban regime-fueled protest network is now attacking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
“There’s nothing organic about it. It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network, and in some cases a critical part of that network,” Rubio said. “And it’s a network they will weaponize against us, and they talk about it openly, about how they will use that network to pressure American policymakers. Not just here in the United States, like Code Pink, but all over the world.”
Asked by Lara Trump if critics will claim that the State Department’s report on the Castro regime is part of “scare tactics” to potentially justify a U.S. military action in Cuba, Rubio responded that everything in the report is factual, “and frankly, I don’t think they can dispute it.”
“People can argue that we shouldn’t do with it, and I know there are plenty of people in American academia, and frankly in American press, that sympathize with the Cuban regime and have for a very long time,” Rubio said. “Part of it is motivated by their anti-Americanism, and part of it is motivated by ideological affinity.”
“There are plenty, there are enough people in key nodes of our society, including professors, but frankly, in the past we’ve seen people within our own government, that sympathize with the Cuban regime,” he continued. “It’s the way they get spies without paying them. But it doesn’t mean we can ignore this threat.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.”