Marco Rubio has long been a fierce critic of dictatorial leaders who have suffocated speech in their countries and crushed the opposition. As a senator, he headed the legislation and condemned “the continuous repression of the dissent” in the native cuba of his parents and repeatedly requested “expression not repression” in countries like Venezuela.
But now as Secretary of State, it is in the center of the recent government actions to deny the entry of visa holders to the United States or arrest and try to deport people, including a married green card holder with an American citizen. The critics of the administration measures and those involved in the cases have said that they were attacked due to their speech, their support to the Palestinians or their criticisms of the Trump administration policies.
Rubio dismissed the reaction of last week for arrest and tried to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who helped lead pro-palestinian protests at Columbia University. “It’s not about freedom of expression. These are people who have no right to be in the United States to begin,” Rubio told journalists on March 12. “No one has the right to a student visa. No one has the right to a green card, by the way.”
As Secretary of State, Rubio has the right to revoke a green card or a visa under an immigration law of 1952, the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, recently told reporters, although legal scholars say that the government has to demonstrate why it is justified.
Some experts who have followed Rubio’s career see a dissonance between his actions as Secretary of State and what he defended as a senator, especially his intolerance to political repression, reducing his authority to demand the restoration of democratic freedoms in other places.
“It is a rank hypocrisy,” said Daniel Drezner, professor of International Policy at Fletcher Law and Diplomacy at the University of Tufts. Drezner, who has written about Rubio’s political evolution, said the Secretary of State has made a “180” turn of what he has defended in his political career.
Drezner said Rubio Halceta to Latin America, and particularly Cuba, is a constant in his political career. “Perhaps the idea is that he is saying and doing things that contradict the substance of his criticism of Cuba,” said Drezner, “but when doing that, he still criticizes Cuba and makes Donald Trump agree with him, maybe that in itself, in Rubio’s mind, can be worth it.”
There is no shortage of videos, transcripts and legislative actions in which Rubio defends democratic principles such as the freedom of assembly and vilified to countries that repress those freedoms.
After Senator Tim Kaine discussed his trip to Cuba in the Senate’s floor in 2014, the year in which the then President Barack Obama normalized relations with the country, Rubio responded with an amazing speech saying that Cuba was “good in repression” and exported to places like Venezuela. He cited the example of Leopoldo López, the former mayor of Caracas. “He is sitting in jail at this time because he is protesting against the government,” he said at that time.
In 2022, Rubio protested for the participation of Cuba in the ninth summit of the Americas because its president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, had “criminalized criticism” to the government.
In response to NBC News questions, a state department spokesman repeated Rubio’s comments that the problem is not about freedom of expression, and added that, although the department does not discuss cases of individual visas, all visa applicants “are continually examined by the Government.”
‘Send a clear message’
Although he is not directly critical with Rubio, the founder of a group based in the United States that monitors human rights in Cuba said he distrusts what he is seeing that happens in the United States.
The arrests of immigrant protesters and academics “are a step back in human rights but also in democracy,” said Laritza Divester, founder of Cubalex, adding that “sends a clear message: be careful with what he says on social networks, or it can be the next.”
Diver grew in Cuba with Fidel Castro and fled in 2017 when Cubalex, then a legal group based in Havana, became a target of government intimidation.
Dictatorships use the strategy of denying the entry of dissidents to their countries, he said. If he tried to fly to Cuba for an emergency, the government could deny its entrance, as has happened throughout the history of the communist government, including what happened to the famous singer Celia Cruz. He denied the entrance to Cuba several times, even when his mother was dying.
With respect to the recent actions of the Trump administration, “this is the first step towards a society that is silent before the abuses, where people do not dare to say what they think to avoid certain consequences,” Diversent said.
Concerns about the denials and arrests of the visa are not limited to Cuban exiles. Juan Carlos Avita, 19, an aerospace engineering student in Elroy, Arizona, said he cast his first presidential vote for Trump in November, hoping to mark the beginning of a new economy.
But the student Mexico said that he is disturbed by the tight of freedom of expression and the right to protest. He accepts the need to take measures against those who commit violence, but said that immigrants “contribute unique perspectives around the world” that perhaps that could enrich Americans, said: “As long as the other laws continue. They are not harming anyone physically. They are not damaging private property.”
Rubio “should not have two faces when it comes to America, especially [on] Palestine, “said Avita, who said he has come to” think that I made a mistake “when he voted for Trump.
Daniel Pedreira, a visiting professor of International Policy and Relations at the International University of Florida, said that the steps taken by the United States and the role of Rubio in them are different from what has happened in countries with repressive governments, because the United States continues to have a separation of powers.
Khalil’s case is in court and a judge has blocked the deportation of Badar Khan Suri, a graduate student of Georgetown of India, who was collected by immigration agents and accused of spreading the propaganda of Hamas. Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, denied Thursday that Suri once made pro-haumes or anti-Semitic statements. In Cuba or Venezuela, Pedreira said, there would be no decline or the possibility of appeal.
The Immigration Law has allowed the deportations of legal residents, holders of foreign visas or tourists for a series of crimes, including crimes involving “moral deposit.” National Security officials, application of the law and border have had to balance public security with international immigration and cross -border trade.
No contradiction
John Suárez, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, said that the Cuban community of Florida has seen terrorists and spies infiltrated in the United States and the torturers and guards of the prison of Cuba obtaining legal residence. He pointed out the recent arrest of Tomas Emilio Hernández Cruz, 71, a former high -ranking official in the Cuban Intelligence Service.
Suarez, who is also a human rights activist, said his organization burningly supports freedom of expression: “Even speech we find disgusting,” he said. But he also said that he does not see a contradiction in the actions of Rubio and his registration challenging repressive regimes because the Secretary of State has said that he is pointing to people who “occupy university buildings and destroy them and destroy them, and retain campus as hostages.”
Rubio still enjoys strong support in the American Cuban community of Florida, said Suarez. The Secretary of State was warmly received by the community at the recent funeral of Lincoln Díaz Balart, the former congressman, which Suárez also attended.
Back in Arizona, Eric Busch, 64, from Phoenix, a Trump supporter in 2016, 2020 and 2024, said he has respected US laws since he arrived in the country from Chile. “You are here with a tourist visa, a student or business visa, you must respect the law,” said Busch, a semitruck seller and naturalized citizen.
He said he agreed with Rubio in the case of Khalil. “I should respect the law and protest peacefully. This guy is not peaceful,” Busch said about Khalil, adding: “If Cubans want to come and do the same, they should also be expelled or Chileans. I don’t care.”
But the history of the sliding of Cuba to authoritarianism, from the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista to the communist acquisition of Castro and the continuous control of the party should be familiar for Rubio, and one that should be taken seriously, according to a scholar of Cuban history.
When Castro took power in 1959, he trusted the mentality of the mafia and portrayed the conditions as “in black and white” to ensure that “he and his power and loyal to him predominate,” said Lillian Guerra, a professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida.
“Marco Rubio as Secretary of State should be very aware of the history of the emergence of authoritarianism in Cuba and how that really dismantled more than 100 years of the struggle for democracy on the island, as well as the lessons of how Fidel Castro managed to centralize the authority and create authoritarianism, the strategies, the media, the inhabitants,” said Guerrer.
“All those things are very close to its history,” said Guerra about Rubio. “I don’t know how I could punish what seems to be happening at all levels of Trump administration.”
