标签： Dominican Republic

In a sharp rebuke of a recent unilateral move by the Dominican Republic, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a forceful condemnation of the decision to expel nine Cuban diplomatic officials alongside their immediate family members, insisting the action lacks any legitimate or factual justification.

Havana has pushed back firmly against any implication of misconduct by its diplomatic corps, emphasizing that all Cuban representatives stationed in the Dominican Republic have consistently adhered to the standards outlined in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The Cuban government further confirmed that its envoys have always fully respected the domestic legal framework of the Dominican Republic, leaving no grounds for the expulsion order.

According to Cuban officials, the hostile measure is not an independent decision by Santo Domingo, but rather the direct result of sustained pressure from the United States, part of Washington’s long-running campaign to diplomatically isolate Cuba on the global stage. The Cuban government pointed to two recent precedents that underscore the Dominican Republic’s shifting alignment with U.S. policy toward Havana: first, the Dominican Republic’s choice to bar Cuban representatives from the postponed Summit of the Americas, and second, its reversal of position on a United Nations resolution backed by Cuba that calls for an end to the U.S. trade embargo against the island nation.

While Cuba acknowledged that the expulsions carry the potential to inflict severe, long-lasting damage to formal bilateral relations between the two Caribbean nations, it also stressed that the step will not sever the deep-rooted, historic connections that bind the Cuban and Dominican peoples. In its official statement, the Cuban government highlighted the shared cultural heritage, intertwined historical experiences, long-standing economic ties, and history of mutual solidarity that connect the two populations, noting these bonds run far deeper than current diplomatic tensions.

“The Dominican people can always count on the unwavering friendship and solidarity of the Cuban people,” the statement concluded.

Under the Donald Trump administration, new, stricter restrictions on the controversial practice of birth tourism have put Dominican citizens’ long-standing access to U.S. travel for childbirth under growing pressure. Birth tourism, the practice that sees foreign nationals travel to the U.S. specifically to give birth so their children can claim automatic U.S. citizenship by birthright, has become a key enforcement target for federal officials in recent months.

The U.S. Department of State has issued a formal clarification that standard B1/B2 tourist and business visas are not permitted to be used for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States. The agency has made clear that visitors found misusing their travel documentation face immediate visa cancellation and long-term bans on future entry to the country.

To coordinate this enforcement push, the Trump administration established a dedicated interagency body, the Working Group for the Prevention of Birth Tourism, tasked with auditing travel patterns of nonimmigrant visa holders and flagging suspected cases of birth tourism. State Department data confirms that more than 600 visas have already been revoked tied to alleged birth tourism misuse.

Beyond penalizing individual travelers, federal authorities are also cracking down on the unregulated industry that facilitates these trips. Investigations are ongoing into commercial networks and companies that market birth tourism packages, offering services ranging from visa application support to pre-arranged hospital stays and postpartum care. Officials have issued additional warnings that travelers who intentionally hide their true purpose of travel, submit false information on visa applications, or overstay their approved visit window not only risk losing their current visas but also permanent disqualification from future U.S. entry.

The Department of State added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds broad statutory authority to revoke visas when misuse is confirmed, and emphasized that this targeted enforcement campaign against birth tourism will continue indefinitely as part of the administration’s immigration policy priorities.

In Santo Domingo, a fierce political debate has erupted across the Dominican Republic after the national Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the controversial decision to expel nine officials working at the Cuban Embassy, forcing them to leave the country. Multiple senior opposition political leaders have publicly spoken out against the move, uniformly attributing the unprecedented diplomatic step to unacknowledged pressure exerted by the United States.

Transparency concerns have emerged around a 2025 official cybersecurity training trip taken by two senior members of the Dominican Republic’s Central Electoral Board (JCE) to Spain, after local newspaper Diario Libre revealed that the agency’s official response to public inquiries failed to refute key spending details, while leaving critical questions about costs, trip duration and policy compliance unanswered.

In a detailed response sent to the outlet, the JCE defended its mandate to carry out international professional activities and emphasized the growing critical importance of strengthening cybersecurity for electoral institutions. However, Diario Libre’s review of the response confirms the JCE did not challenge core reported facts: JCE board members Hirayda Fernández and Samir Chami Isa traveled to the Spanish city of León between July 12 and 26, 2025, and each received $12,000 in per diem payments, calculated at a daily rate of $800.

When combined with round-trip airfare for the two officials, the total public cost of the trip amounts to $33,294.27, according to the newspaper’s accounting.

A key point of contention raised by Diario Libre is the mismatch between the length of the trip and the duration of the training itself. The Cybersecurity Summer BootCamp the officials attended only ran from July 14 to 24, totaling roughly 40 hours of structured instruction. This 11-day training window leaves two extra days on the front end and two days on the back end of the 15-day trip unaccounted for, leading the outlet to question what official electoral business justifies collecting per diem for the full 15-day period.

The JCE has stated that it maintains full documentation of the trip’s itinerary, duration, travel arrangements and administrative justifications, and Diario Libre acknowledges that releasing these records to the public would be the clearest path to resolving outstanding questions. So far, however, the agency has not made these materials public.

A second unresolved issue centers on the JCE’s per diem policy itself. The agency cites Act 18/2005 as the legal basis that authorizes the $800 daily per diem rate for its board members, but Diario Libre reports that it has been unable to locate a public version of this legislation. The outlet is now calling on the JCE to publish the full text of the act, along with the official per diem rate schedule and any amendments that have been made to the policy since it was enacted.

Additional clarifications the newspaper has requested include a breakdown of what expenses the $800 daily payment is intended to cover – which typically includes accommodation, meals, local transit and incidentals in standard public per diem policies – as well as whether the JCE requires officials to return any unused per diem funds to public coffers.

While Diario Libre says it accepts the JCE’s position that international professional development and cybersecurity training are legitimate priorities for electoral management bodies, the outlet maintains that the inherent value of such work does not remove the obligation for public entities to account for how taxpayer money is spent, nor to demonstrate that spending is efficient and aligned with stated institutional goals.

In its conclusion, the newspaper stresses that the core of the dispute is not whether international travel or cybersecurity training is a justifiable use of public resources. Instead, the issue at hand is whether public funds are managed with full transparency, and whether every official trip can demonstrate clear, measurable benefits for the electoral institution that authorized it.

At present, Diario Libre is urging the JCE to meet public demand for accountability by publishing all relevant trip documentation, outlining its per diem policy in full, providing a detailed breakdown of all activities carried out by the two officials during their 15-day stay in Spain, and sharing the specific tangible outcomes the trip delivered for the JCE.