The Republican senator Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, sent a formal letter to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) on Thursday, demanding information about their alleged connections with the Cuban regime.
According to a report from the Senate's own Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, the IAM is one of the largest industrial unions in North America, with approximately 600,000 members, and the investigation aims to determine whether the organization has used its members' dues to finance propaganda and lobbying activities in favor of Havana.
The immediate trigger was an event held at the Machinists Hall in Wilmington, California, in May 2026, where David Ramírez Álvarez —second secretary of the Cuban Embassy in Washington— addressed union members as part of the "U.S. Hands Off Cuba" campaign.
In that meeting, the Cuban diplomat described the current Congress as "one of the most active periods in nearly a decade for legislation related to Cuba" and labeled the U.S. embargo as an "act of war" and "collective punishment."
According to the Senate HELP Committee, the case represents an example of a union "colluding" with the Cuban regime and forcing workers to finance "anti-American propaganda" with their own dues.
"These examples raise serious concerns that officials from the IAM union have used their positions within the union to advocate for political goals promoted by the Cuban regime as part of a foreign influence plan," Cassidy stated.
The letter specifically inquires whether personnel from IAM coordinated with Cuban officials, whether payments were made related to the government of Havana, and whether leaders or members consulted with Cuban officials regarding policy towards the island.
"American workers should not be forced to fund promotional activities that advance the foreign policy objectives of a hostile foreign power, particularly one responsible for the death of at least three American citizens and one American resident in international waters," Cassidy wrote in the letter.
This investigation is part of a broader offensive by the U.S. government against the alleged network of Cuban influence on American soil.
The Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury are investigating 145 pro-Cuba nonprofit organizations with combined annual revenues of approximately 1 billion dollars, for allegedly coordinating political activities with Cuban officials without registering as foreign agents under the FARA Act.
The catalyst for that broader investigation was the formal charge against Raúl Castro in May 2026 for his role in the downing of two planes from Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, which revealed the existence of a "rapid response network" capable of mobilizing across the country just nine minutes after the announcement by Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The IAM case is also directly linked to the federal investigation into Ramírez Álvarez, caught on video coordinating legislative lobbying activities with U.S. nonprofit organizations, which investigators consider evidence of foreign direction over groups on American soil.
The general framework of this pressure was documented in the State Department report on Cuba published on July 20, a 100-page document that labels the island as "the capital of 21st-century communism" and details nearly seven decades of espionage and subversion against the U.S.
When presenting that report, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was emphatic: "For over six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and third-worldism in the United States. The American people deserve to know this."
Filed under: