The Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar (Florida-27) sent a formal letter to the United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, urging him to demand that Mexico dissolve the Cuban doctors program operating in that country, which she deems a forced labor scheme that violates the treaty between Mexico, the United States, and Canada (T-MEC/USMCA).
The letter, dated October 22 and made public this Friday, states that more than 3,000 Cuban doctors are working in Mexico under conditions that the U.S. State Department itself has classified as human trafficking and modern slavery.
"Mexico is breaking the rules and helping Havana profit from forced labor," Salazar wrote when publishing the letter. "USMCA is not optional. Mexico cannot benefit from free trade with the United States while allowing the Cuban dictatorship to exploit its doctors."
In the letter, the congresswoman outlines the conditions these professionals face: separation from their families, travel restrictions, and the retention of the majority of their salaries by the Cuban regime. In some cases, doctors receive only 5% of what Mexico pays for their services, with the remainder remaining in the hands of Havana.
Salazar invokes the 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report by the State Department, published in September 2025, which placed Cuba in Level 3 — the most severe category — alongside North Korea and Afghanistan, and described Cuban medical missions as a form of human trafficking.
The legislator also recalls that she personally warned former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador about the consequences of the program during a congressional visit to Mexico City approximately two years ago, without receiving a response. "They were informed that there would be consequences," she wrote in the letter.
The program of Cuban doctors in Mexico began in 2020 under the government of López Obrador and was extended by President Claudia Sheinbaum, reaching around 3,800 professionals from 29 specialties across 23 states through the IMSS-Bienestar system.
Sheinbaum has defended the scheme by arguing that Cuban doctors cover remote areas where there is a shortage of Mexican specialists. In March 2026, the Mexican Embassy in the United States rejected the accusations and stated that the agreements respect the labor rights of the professionals.
Chapter 23 of the USMCA establishes that the signatory countries "shall prohibit the importation of goods" produced with forced labor and "recognize the goal of eliminating all forms of coerced or compulsory labor." Salazar argues that the Mexican program directly violates these provisions.
As an alternative, the congresswoman suggests that Mexico follow Brazil's example, where former president Jair Bolsonaro chose to pay Cuban doctors directly, which led the regime to withdraw its professionals from the country in 2018.
"The Mexican government can do what Bolsonaro did in Brazil: simply pay the doctors directly and free them from their servitude to the Cuban regime," states the letter.
This action is part of a legislative campaign that Salazar has been promoting for years together with other Cuban-American congress members like Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez. In July 2026, that group had already called for sanctions against the Commercializer of Cuban Medical Services (CSMC), the state-owned company that manages the missions.
The letter to Greer represents an escalation by directly linking the issue to the USMCA review that the Office of the Trade Representative opened for public comments at the beginning of October, in anticipation of the formal process scheduled for 2027.
"Do what no other U.S. presidential administration has done and inform the Mexican authorities that their use of Cuban forced labor violates the USMCA, and request that the Mexican government dissolve the program and free these doctors," Salazar concludes in his letter to Greer.
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