Juan Pablo Segura, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, listened on Thursday to the testimony of a survivor of the Cuban medical missions and renewed Washington's call to participating countries to end those agreements.
In a post on his official X account, Segura described the so-called medical brigades of the regime as a "human trafficking program" that "coerces and mistreats Cuban workers to generate income to finance state repression."
The official urged the governments that maintain these agreements to "hire these workers ethically and stop funding the human rights violations committed by the regime, ending these exploitative agreements."
The testimony was heard during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where Segura maintained a busy schedule of bilateral meetings throughout the week.
The statement comes amid a sustained diplomatic offensive by Washington against Cuban medical missions. In August, the State Department sent a report to Congress titled “Coerced-and-Trafficked-Labor of Cuban Medical Professionals”, which documented between 15,000 and 18,000 Cuban health professionals deployed in 51 countries, a figure significantly lower than the 24,000 who operated in over 58 countries at the beginning of 2025.
The document described a systematic pattern of forced labor, surveillance, wage retention, document confiscation, and movement restrictions.
The data from independent organizations reinforces the allegations of the Department of State. A report by Prisoners Defenders based on 1,402 testimonies revealed that 89.79% of respondents stated that they were forced to participate in the mission under coercive circumstances, with workweeks of up to 71.89 hours.
The same report stated that 60.84% of the participants were forced to artificially inflate healthcare statistics, and that in countries like Botswana the Cuban regime received 3,500 euros monthly for each specialist, while the professional earned only 1,000 dollars.
In Brazil, 3,500 Cuban doctors who worked under the Mais Médicos program from 2013 to 2018 filed a lawsuit against the Pan American Health Organization for $129 million, claiming that Cuba received over $2.3 billion while they received less than 10% of that income.
The pressure from Washington has expedited the withdrawal of several countries from the program. Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, and Guyana canceled or did not renew their agreements in the first months of 2026, collectively removing over 1,000 Cuban health professionals.
Belize must decide before the end of September the future of 92 Cuban health professionals operating in the country, while Uruguay is considering a direct payment mechanism for doctors in order to avoid formally breaking its agreement with Cuba, although the U.S. has warned that it could lose international assistance if it maintains the current scheme.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommended in April that countries on the continent withdraw from the program, citing serious indications of forced labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery.
Dr. Raícesa Mora, who publicly denounced the conditions of the program, described it as "trafficking of Cuban medical professionals" and stated that the workers are "exploited, blackmailed, and coerced."
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