Nominations

Floor Speech

President Biden and Secretary Blinken know that PAHO has cooperated with the communist regime in Cuba to traffic doctors overseas, and they know there are Cuban doctors who are trying to sue PAHO and hold traffickers accountable.

Here are the facts. In July 2013, the Cuban Ministry of Health signed an agreement with the Brazilian Ministry of Health to formalize an arrangement for Cuban doctors to provide medical services in Brazil.

That agreement required the administration of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to transmit a monthly payment through PAHO to the Cuban Ministry of Health for the medical services provided by each Cuban doctor serving in Brazil.

It also prevented Cuban doctors from seeking employment in Brazil outside of the formal structure of the arrangement.

More than 20,000 Cuban medical professionals serving in Brazil under the Mais Medicos Program had their wages stolen by the Cuban Government and received only a small fraction of what they earned, and that was with the support of PAHO.

Their family members were prohibited from accompanying them, and many had their passports confiscated.

Cuban doctors were the only medical professionals participating in the program who had their salaries directly garnished by their government. Meanwhile, doctors from other countries, serving in Brazil, received their full wages for their medical services.

Other Cuban doctors have suffered similar abuses in Angola, Guatemala, Mexico, Qatar, and Venezuela.

For example, in 2019, a group of Cuban doctors reported they had been directed and often coerced to use their medical services to influence votes in favor of the Maduro regime, including by denying medical treatment to opposition supporters and by giving precise voting instructions to elderly patients.

This gross program is a huge moneymaker for the communist thugs ruling Cuba.

In 2018 alone, they pocketed more than $6.3 billion from exporting Cuban professionals to work overseas. This is clearly human trafficking, and medical missions by Cuban doctors represent a majority of those profits.

Since I have been in the Senate, since 2019, I have been fighting for these Cuban doctors and against human trafficking. But actually nothing has been done to hold PAHO accountable. PAHO is hiding behind legal immunity. President Biden has the power to lift their immunity, and I have requested his administration do so multiple times, but they have shamefully declined. It is wrong.

Victims of human trafficking deserve to see their alleged abusers in court, and PAHO should never be able to hide behind claims of immunity to avoid accountability for their role in facilitating those abuses.

I have informed Secretary Blinken that until substantial steps toward fulfilling this request are made, I will be blocking all relevant State Department nominees.

Americans deserve qualified and competent people in positions of power who put American interests first. If this administration wants to appease dictators like the Castro and Diaz-Canel regimes and go to Venezuela and try to buy oil, I am going to hold them accountable.

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