U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions late Thursday targeting the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP, a Castro-era organization used to spread Marxist ideology abroad.
"For decades, Cuba has been the world capital for radical left-wing terrorism. The regime in Havana has recruited, trained, and backed violent Marxist and third-worldist movements across our hemisphere and beyond," Rubio wrote on X.
Rubio continued, "Today, we are targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba's subversive and radical operations."
He said that he is using President Trump's Cuba executive-order sanctions authority to put ICAP and others on the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list, or SDN list.
Those Cuban entities include:
- Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (MINFAR)
- Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP)
- Amistur Cuba S.A.
- Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR)
- Minera La Victoria S.A.
What does this mean:
- Freezes any U.S.-linked assets of those entities.
- Bars U.S. persons, companies, banks, nonprofits, and organizations from doing business with them, unless licensed by OFAC.
- Raises sanctions risk for foreign firms and banks that continue transacting with them, especially if the entities are tied to Cuba's military, intelligence, tourism, mining, or political-control apparatus.
Rubio continued, "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate radical Marxist regimes in our hemisphere seeking to threaten U.S. national security and engage in influence operations to export their poisonous and evil 'revolution' to our country and around the world."
More importantly, nonprofit investigator Jason Curtis Anderson noted, "Two of the organizations listed above are direct partners of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has 100,000 members nationwide and 250 elected officials in office."
According to Fox News investigator Asra Nomani, "The groups working closely with ICAP include the People's Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, funded by Singham, a Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai. As reported, Singham has pumped $285 million into nonprofits since 2017 that have built very close relationships with ICAP and the communist government of Cuba."
In December 2025, we asked a very simple question:
At the time, we noted, "ICAP functioned as the intake valve - political cover for intelligence operations designed to cultivate long-term assets rather than short-term spies."
Adding that it "sits at the center, functioning as a coordinating hub. Orbiting it is the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a deliberately loose coalition that links 77 organizations of activists, nonprofits, and campaigns while minimizing legal exposure or clear command structures."
Far-left activist Calla Walsh, who spends her days in Iran, called Rubio's sanctions on ICAP a "major attack on the Cuban Revolution and the Cuba solidarity movement, targeting Cuba's primary international solidarity organization (ICAP) and the organized grassroots base of the revolution (the CDRs)."
Beyond Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently signaled that a crackdown on dark-money-funded NGOs may be coming.
"We made substantial progress, and I think in the weeks and months ahead, we are going to have a lot to report," Bessent said.
The foreign influence operations routed through America's nonprofit world, and embraced by parts of the Democratic Party, extend well beyond Cuba.
Turkish-American Twitch streamer Hasan Piker recently laid out what investigators already know: American Marxist tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly been living in China and has been linked by The New York Times to CCP-aligned propaganda networks, has been operating a pro-Marxist NGO network in the U.S. for revolutionary efforts.
Taken together, these developments appear to answer the question we asked in December about whether there is a "Cuba connection" behind the radicalization of America's nonprofit left. It certainly appears to be panning out that way. And if you ever wondered why America's left champions anti-U.S. ideals, death to capitalism, socialism, and communism, as well as its strange obsession with rioting and destroying private property...
...well, it is becoming increasingly clear that these revolutionary efforts may be funded and/or supported by foreign adversaries.
What's next? It seems like the walls are closing in on the CCP-linked Roy Singham network.
This could be incredibly terrible optics for the DSA...
... which has spent considerable time in Havana with communists.