Trump admin announces new restrictions on travel to Cuba

The Trump administration is imposing new restrictions on travel to Cuba, national security adviser John Bolton said Wednesday.

“The Department of the Treasury will implement further regulatory changes to restrict non-family travel to Cuba,” Bolton said at a speech in Miami to the Bay of Pigs veterans group on the 58th anniversary of the failed CIA-orchestrated invasion of the island in 1961. “These new measures will help steer Americans dollars away from the Cuban regime.”

{mosads}Bolton also announced new limits on the amount of money Cuban Americans can send to relatives on the island at $1,000 per person.

The new restrictions come after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier in the day that the administration will allow U.S. citizens to sue foreign businesses using property seized during the 1959 Cuban revolution, escalating pressure against the communist island nation.

The U.S. government has already certified nearly 6,000 claims valued at more than $8 billion in total, including actual value and interest.

Taken together, these changes add up to a significant rollback of former President Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba, which Bolton criticized.

Bolton also said Wednesday that the socialist governments of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua are “beginning to crumble.”

“The walls are closing in,” Bolton said of U.S. pressure against Maduro. “There is no turning back. The people will prevail. And when they do, we know that Cuba will be next. And soon after, we pray, the third member of the Troika, Nicaragua, will also at last be free.”

The U.S. has recognized National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president and tightened sanctions on the country over the past few months.