Flailing Cuba invites exiles to return, but hurdles remain

CNN

By Patrick Oppmann

Havana, Cuba (CNN) — As President Donald Trump rachets up the pressure on Cuba’s communist-run government and threatens a US “takeover” of the island, he frequently repeats a central promise: that decades after they left, Cuban exiles will soon be able to return to their homeland.

“A lot of unbelievable people are going to be going back to Cuba, hopefully not to stay,” Trump said at a recent White House event with prominent members of the Cuban American community in attendance. “We don’t want to make it so nice that they stay. But some people probably do want to stay.
They love Cuba so much,” he said.

Trump’s claim has struck a chord with many in the Cuban exile community who vowed never to return to the island while the Castros remained in power. But it also flies in the face of the reality that in recent years, an increasing number of Cubans who left are returning to see family, vacation and even quietly set up small businesses fronted by local partners.

The invitation to Cuban exiles to do business in their homeland has been made repeatedly by the government over the years but so far has produced few tangible results.

On Monday night, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba’s deputy prime minister and minister for foreign trade and investment who is also a great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro, said in a televised appearance that Cuban exiles are welcome to invest in the island.

Cuban exiles, Oliva Fraga said, would for the first time be able to openly own businesses on the island, invest in large-scale infrastructure projects, and hold bank accounts with state-run banks.

The offer will likely to do little to placate those in the Cuban American community advocating for greater political freedoms, a full economic opening and the return of property seized from exiles.

Exiles seek major overhaul

US economic sanctions block most commercial activity with the island. Many Cuban exiles say that Havana’s own tight restrictions on foreign investment severely limit business opportunities and that routine transactions take years under Cuba’s communist bureaucracy.

A wide-ranging overhaul of the island’s economic and legal system needs to happen before many exiles will consider returning to rebuild their country, said Pedro Freyre, a Cuban American who chairs the Akerman law firm’s international practice and has advised US companies on doing business in Cuba.

The island has reached “that moment when the emperor has no clothes,” Freyre told CNN. “We’re done here. You know, this thing collapsed, it failed, but we have a great opportunity to redo it, and we can do it.”

“If there’s a couple of things that we know how to do as Cuban Americans, it’s number one, build cities,” he added.

“I’ve dealt with the Cuban government before. There are smart people, people who are well-trained, well-educated, who understand what’s going on, and who have a built-in incentive,” Freyre said. “They’ve seen the destruction and the collapse of the country over the 60 years, and now the door is open.”

The Cuban government is under more pressure to reform its flatlining economy than at any point since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Following the US attack on Venezuela in January and the Trump administration’s threats of tariffs on Mexico, access to fuel from abroad has been cut off.

Blackouts spur protests

Blackouts now last most of the day in many Cuban cities, tourism is dwindling, and some foreign companies have begun to pull their personnel from the island amid deteriorating conditions.

Weary of the constant blackouts, Cubans are increasingly taking to the streets to bang pots and pans and demand that the government keep the power on.

On Monday, Cuba’s energy grid collapsed, plunging ten million people into the dark. Officials said they were working to restore power but there was no timeline on how long that would take.

It’s not yet clear if Trump’s claims that the Cuban government is on the verge of collapse and willing to strike a deal will lead to a historic economic and political opening on the island that some are referring to as “Cuba-stroika,” referencing the relaxation of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

On Friday for the first time, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that his government has entered into talks with the Trump administration after weeks of saying it would not negotiate while being threatened by the US.

But already some Cuban officials caution the government is unlikely to make the major concessions that the Trump administration is demanding.

The talks, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla wrote on X, do “not involve in any way the internal affairs, constitutional frameworks, nor the political, economic and social models of the two countries.”

Both the New York Times and the Miami Herald have reported that the Trump administration sees Diaz-Canel as an obstacle to change and are seeking to push the Cuban president from power in their talks with former leader Raul Castro’s family members.

During an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said the island’s future was up for grabs.

“Taking Cuba, that’s a big honor,” he said. “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.”

Even some Cuban Americans already investing on the island say the government needs to carry out a greater economic and political reforms in order to transform their homeland.

Risky business

“The people who are doing business in Cuba are taking a huge risk, and they should be commended for that,” Cuban American investor Hugo Cancio told CNN. Cancio left the island as child during the Mariel boatlift and now owns businesses that export food and cars to the island, which are permitted under US law.

“The private sector in Cuba has prospered tremendously in the last three to four years,” he said. “But that’s jumping over hurdles and hurdles and changes and reversals of decisions.”

Returning Cuban Americans are not just providing an economic lifeline to the island, Cancio said.

“Respect our differences, respect our convictions, that we’re not going to always agree on the political issues, okay? But if that is respected, I think that’s a start. That’s a good beginning,” he said.

For some Cubans, those very political differences mean they are unable to return to their homeland.

Independent journalist Alejandro González Raga was jailed as part of the Cuban government’s infamous “Black Spring” crackdown on dissidents in 2003.

González told CNN he was forced into exile in Spain from prison and that he is prevented from traveling back to the island by the government in Havana. That is the case with other dissidents, as well as doctors and athletes who defected during government-sponsored trips abroad.

“It’s something we wish for,” González said of Trump’s promise to exiles that they will be able to return to the island. “And that it happens without social trauma because Cuban families have already suffered too much,” he said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.