White House to remove Cuba from terror list amid Vatican’s efforts at prisoner release

CNA Staff, Jan 14, 2025 / 16:45 pm

The Biden administration in its final days will remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department’s state sponsor of terrorism list, a decision the White House says was facilitated with the help of the Vatican to secure the release of political prisoners there.

A senior administration official told media in a call on Tuesday that President Joe Biden would be lifting Cuba from the list. The Biden administration officially announced the removal on Tuesday afternoon.

The country has been just one of four on the list, the others being North Korea, Syria, and Iran.

The island nation was placed on the list on Jan. 11, 2021, in the waning days of the first Trump administration. The White House said at the time its aim was “denying the Castro regime the resources it uses to oppress its people at home and countering its malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.”

The White House has coordinated with the Catholic Church, among others, to improve conditions in Cuba and secure the release of political prisoners, the official said on Tuesday. Human Rights Watch says more than 1,000 individuals in Cuba meet the definition of political prisoners. 

The Vatican is backing the removal of the country from the terror list, the official noted, and has previously helped to secure prisoner releases there.

In addition to removing Cuba from the terror list, the White House will also issue the country a waiver from Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened embargo provisions against Cuba. 

Title III of the law allows U.S. citizens to sue individuals allegedly trafficking in property expropriated by the country’s communist government.

In a Tuesday statement to CNA, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski noted that Cuba “was first removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism during the Obama administration and was put back on the list in the waning days of President Trump’s first administration.” Miami has historically been home to a large portion of Cuban immigrants and Americans of Cuban heritage.

“Cuba, along with Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, is on the verge of becoming a failed state,” the archbishop said. “Cuba lacks fuel and food” and lacks as well the ability “to represent a real threat to the U.S.”

“More than 500,000 Cubans have come to the U.S. in recent months — their presence has not given rise to any increased fears of terrorism,” the prelate added. “Hopefully, being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism will spur the Cuban regime to release its several thousand political prisoners.”

Cuba is majority-Catholic. Church leaders there for years have been involved in negotiations with the communist government regarding human rights and market reforms.

The country has for decades been accused of human rights abuses. Freedom House lists Cuba as “not free,” with the country sharply limiting civil and political liberties, while “official obstacles make it difficult for churches to operate without interference.”

Pope Francis hosted Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel at the Vatican in 2023. In 2021, amid major protests in the country, the Holy Father professed himself “near to the dear Cuban people in these difficult moments, in particular to those families suffering the most.” Francis also visited the country in 2015.

St. John Paul II likewise famously visited the island in 1998, becoming the first pope to do so. While there he openly prayed that the communist nation would become one of “freedom, mutual trust, social justice, and lasting peace.” Pope Benedict XVI also visited the nation in 2012.