Havana, Cuba
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President Donald Trump has frequently reiterated a central promise as he ramps up pressure on Cuba’s communist-run government and threatens a U.S. “takeover” of the island. It would allow Cuban exiles to return to their homeland immediately, decades after leaving the country.
“An incredible number of people will go back to Cuba, but I hope they don’t stay,” President Trump said at a recent White House event attended by prominent members of the Cuban-American community. “We don’t want them to stay too good, but there are probably some who will want to stay.
“They love Cuba so much,” he said.
Trump’s claims resonated with many in the Cuban exile community, who have vowed never to return to the island while the Castro family remains in power. But it also faces the reality that in recent years, more and more Cubans who have left the country have returned to see their families, seek vacations, and even quietly start small businesses led by local partners.
Over the years, the government has repeatedly called on Cuban exiles to do business in their homeland, but so far there has been little tangible success.
On Monday night, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who is also the great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro, said on television that Cuban exiles are welcome to invest on the island.
For the first time, Cuban exiles will be able to openly own businesses on the island, invest in large infrastructure projects and hold bank accounts in state-run banks, Oliva Fraga said.
The proposal would do little to appease members of the Cuban-American community, who advocate greater political freedoms, full economic opening, and the return of property seized from exiles.
U.S. economic sanctions have prevented most commercial activity with the island. Many Cuban exiles say business opportunities are severely limited by Havana’s own strict restrictions on foreign investment, and that routine transactions can take years under Cuba’s communist bureaucracy.
Pedro Freire, a Cuban-American who heads the international practice at Akkelman Law and advises U.S. companies on doing business in Cuba, said a broader overhaul of the island’s economic and legal systems is needed before many exiles would consider returning to rebuild their homeland.
Freire told CNN that the island has reached “the moment when the emperor takes off his clothes.” “This is it. You know, this has fallen apart and failed, but we have a great opportunity to start over and we can do it.”
“If there’s one thing we know we should do as Cuban-Americans, it’s number one: build cities,” he added.
“I’ve dealt with the Cuban government before. There are smart people, well-trained, well-educated people who understand what’s going on and have built-in incentives,” Freire said. “They have seen the destruction and destruction of the country for 60 years, and now the door is open.”
The Cuban government is under more pressure to reform its flattened economy than ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Access to fuel from abroad has been cut off following the U.S. attack on Venezuela in January and the Trump administration’s threat of tariffs on Mexico.
Currently, many cities in Cuba are without power for most of the day, tourist numbers are decreasing, and some foreign companies have begun withdrawing staff from the island due to the worsening situation.
Tired of constant power outages, Cubans are increasingly taking to the streets banging pots and pans to demand that the government continue to provide electricity.
On Monday, Cuba’s energy grid collapsed, leaving 10 million people in darkness. Officials said they were working to restore power, but it was unclear how long it would take.
It is not yet clear whether President Trump’s claims that Cuba’s government is on the verge of collapse and that he is ready to strike a deal will lead to Cuba’s historic economic and political opening, which some have dubbed the “Cuban Stoica,” referring to the loosening of Soviet control in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel acknowledged for the first time on Friday that his government had entered into talks with the Trump administration, after weeks of saying it would not negotiate despite threats from the United States.
But some Cuban officials have already warned that the government is unlikely to make the kind of major concessions the Trump administration is demanding.
Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla wrote in the X newspaper that the talks “will have no involvement in the internal affairs, constitutional framework or political, economic or social models of the two countries.”
The New York Times and the Miami Herald reported that the Trump administration views Díaz-Canel as an obstacle to change and is seeking to oust the Cuban president from power in talks with former leader Raul Castro’s family.
President Trump said during an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that the island’s future was up in the air.
“It’s a great honor to take Cuba with us,” he said. “I think you can do whatever you want with it, whether you release it or receive it.”
Some Cuban-Americans who are already invested in the island also argue that the government needs to implement greater economic and political reforms to transform their homeland.
“People 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 a child on the Mariel boat lift and now runs a business that exports food and automobiles to the island, which is allowed under U.S. law.
“Cuba’s private sector has flourished greatly in the last three to four years,” he said. “But it’s a lot of jumping over hurdles and changing and reversing decisions.”
Cancio said the repatriated Cuban Americans are not just providing an economic lifeline to the island.
“Respect our differences, respect our beliefs. We won’t always agree on political issues, right? But if that’s respected, I think that’s a start. That’s a good start,” he said.
For some Cubans, precisely political differences mean they cannot return to their homeland.
Independent journalist Alejandro González Laga was imprisoned in 2003 as part of the Cuban government’s infamous “Black Spring” crackdown on dissidents.
González told CNN that he was forced from prison into exile in Spain and that the Havana government has prevented him from returning to the island. The same goes for other dissidents, as well as doctors and athletes who defected during government-sponsored trips abroad.
“That’s what we want,” Gonzalez said of President Trump’s promise to the exiles that they would be able to return to the island. “And Cuban families have already suffered so much that something like this happens without social trauma,” he said.
