The Cuban regime prevented the return to Cuba of independent blogger and journalist Agustín Valentín López Canino on Monday, who was visiting the United States and resides on the island.
The complaint was filed by the activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of the Movimiento Democracia, through his social media from Miami International Airport.
"At this moment, at Miami International Airport, the lifelong dictatorship of Cuba has just denied entry to the country for activist Agustín López Canino due to his civic opinion. Agustín was visiting the USA, and his home is in Cuba," Sánchez wrote.
López Canino, born in 1955 in Santo Domingo, Villa Clara, is a human rights advocate with a long documented history of repression.
On December 10, 2023, the regime arrested him along with activist Wilber Aguilar just before the annual peaceful march organized along the Havana coastline to commemorate International Human Rights Day.
In June 2026, he was arrested again in Havana by agents of the political police, as confirmed by the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP), remaining for nearly 12 hours in a unit of the National Revolutionary Police.
The case fits into a systematic pattern that the regime has codified with the new migration legislation of 2026. Laws 171, 172, and 173, published on May 5, 2026, establish broad and discretionary grounds to deny entry or exit from the country to those deemed a threat by the regime.
Article 24.1 of the Immigration Law prohibits entry to anyone who "organizes, promotes, carries out, or participates in hostile actions against the political, economic, and social foundations of the Cuban state."
The organization Cubalex warned that these regulations consolidate a securitized and discretionary control system over human mobility, without official notification or the possibility of legal defense for those affected.
Cuban "regulated" individuals only discover their condition when they arrive at the airport, as happened this Monday with López Canino.
It's not the first recent case. In February 2026, the regime returned to Miami the Lady in White Leticia Ramos Herrería when she was attempting to return to Havana, without any official explanation. Activist Omara Ruiz Urquiola has been denied entry to Cuba multiple times since 2022.
The regime has also resorted to forced exile as a form of repression. José Daniel Ferrer was expelled to Miami on October 13, 2025, after more than two years in prison, and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara arrived in Miami on July 19, 2026, after five years in prison, with his release conditioned on his permanent departure from the island.
Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who denounces the case of López Canino, is well-acquainted with the regime's migratory arbitrariness. He arrived in the United States in 1967 as a political refugee at the age of 12, and for decades he faced a migratory limbo in that country, until a judge suspended his deportation order in July 2023 and granted him protection against torture.
López Canino summed up his stance towards the regime in a phrase: "I have always been undisciplined in everything, except for my conscience."
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