A new law authored by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and passed by Congress in February 2026 punishes countries that are complicit in the human trafficking of Cuban doctors through the Castro regime’s medical missions abroad. The same law for fiscal year 2027 is expected to be voted on in the House soon.
For decades, the Cuban dictatorship has made billions by coercing its medical professionals to work in places no one wants to go, under the worst labor conditions. But the doctors themselves see very little of that money. The regime earns an estimated $4-8 billion per year from the program, and regime operatives keep 75-95% of what the doctors are paid.
The U.S. State Department says the regime confiscates doctors’ passports, forces their families to stay in Cuba as leverage, assigns handlers to watch them, and punishes families if a doctor defects. Since 2010, State Department reports have called the program exploitative. In 2020, State labeled the practice “human trafficking” or “forced labor” run by the Cuban regime.
A new provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 targets countries that pay the authoritarian dictatorship for these exploited medical workers. The State Department must now list every country or group that pays for these personnel and notify them they’re on the list. Foreign officials involved can be banned from entering the United States, and their finances and property here may also be frozen.
The law is already obtaining results. Guatemala, Jamaica, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Paraguay, and Honduras are reducing or outright ending their use of Cuban doctors. Some, like the Bahamas, are changing terms by trying to pay doctors directly instead of paying the regime – something the dictatorship has rejected before.
Consequently, the Trump administration has enforced this law by imposing visa restrictions on officials from Brazil, Grenada, and some African countries tied to the program. This legislation ensures accountability, something that past Democratic administrations were willing to overlook. The law also strongly supports the oppressed Cuban people by protecting Cuban doctors from exploitation and abuse, while cutting off a critical financial lifeline to the regime.
Meanwhile, a separate trend is emerging in American politics. Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who fled communist Cuba in the 1970s, warned of a “vicious cycle” that could lead to “communists in double digits” serving in Congress. Gonzalez likened this to a “takeover of a host body, the Democratic Party,” saying, “It’s being taken over by body snatchers and they’re not able to mount any defense of it whatsoever even if they wanted to.”
Under the current political environment, Gonzalez predicted, “We’re going to get communists in double digits in the House of Representatives at least, there’s no doubt of that.” Over the course of a year, New York City elected a socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, while three of his endorsed socialist congressional candidates – Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier – defeated establishment Democrats, including two incumbents. On the other side of the country, Seattle elected a socialist mayor, Katie Wilson.
Just this week, Colorado congressional candidate Melat Kiros defeated 15-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, further illustrating socialists’ ability to topple entrenched party figures. While these politicians identify as socialist, Gonzalez pointed out that to the authors of the communist manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “there was no difference between socialism and communism, they were interchangeable.”
“These people are communists, and when you catch them unawares, they actually say, ‘Oh, yeah, I know we want communism,'” he said. Gonzalez attributed the rise to White guilt combined with a real affordability crisis in cities like New York. “A very important component of this and one that conservatives sometimes forget is that a lot of these votes are White votes, White young kids who have come in from the suburbs, who feel guilty about a number of things,” he explained.
“They have gone to very expensive Ivy League schools and they’re trying to make a living in New York City without being a banker. And you can’t make a living in New York City if you’re not a banker, sorry, you’re going to have an affordability crisis.” This, Gonzalez said, makes socialist promises of handouts, such as free tuition, free bus fares, and public-run grocery stores, an easy sell.
Neetu Arnold, a Manhattan Institute policy analyst, said in an interview with Fox News Digital, “The rise in socialism in America, it’s going to shape our politics. I think it’s going to make things more extreme.” She explained, “What the socialist candidates have tapped into are real frustrations and grievances, but the solutions that they’re offering is essentially more government involvement rather than trying to address the underlying problems.”
“What a lot of younger people are finding out is that it’s not that easy to get housing. They’re in student debt, they are struggling to find stable jobs, and so the things that they were promised are not necessarily coming true.” Arnold said she hopes both sides of the political aisle recognize that “socialist policies are a threat to the American way of life.”
