1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

I write with growing alarm over the accelerating humanitarian deterioration in Cuba and the role current U.S. policy may be playing in deepening civilian suffering. Cuba is facing severe shortages of food, medicine, fuel, and electricity. Extended blackouts, collapsing infrastructure, medical scarcity, and large-scale outward migration reflect conditions that are no longer episodic hardship but systemic breakdown. The burden of this crisis is falling on ordinary Cuban families — the elderly, children, patients requiring chronic care — not on political elites. The Cuban government bears responsibility for repression, economic mismanagement, and grave human rights abuses. That reality must be acknowledged clearly. But U.S. policy must also be judged by its real-world humanitarian impact. Broad sanctions and aggressive enforcement measures, even when formally containing humanitarian exemptions, frequently produce predictable secondary effects: banking over-compliance, frozen transactions, shipping refusals, fuel disruptions, and breakdowns in supply chains that obstruct access to essential goods. When fuel shortages prevent food distribution, when medical imports are delayed or blocked, when remittance channels are constricted, it is civilians who absorb the shock. The United States must not contribute — directly or indirectly — to conditions that risk widespread deprivation ninety miles from our shores. Civilian suffering cannot become collateral to political strategy. If current measures are exacerbating scarcity without producing democratic reform, they require immediate recalibration. Destabilization is not a human rights policy. Congress cannot rely solely on hearings and reports while conditions deteriorate. Immediate, concrete intervention is required. Congress must: • Mandate expanded, automatic humanitarian carve-outs ensuring the unimpeded flow of food, fuel, medicine, medical equipment, agricultural inputs, and electricity-related infrastructure. • Direct the Treasury Department to issue binding, public guidance preventing financial institutions and shipping companies from engaging in over-compliance that blocks lawful humanitarian trade. • Restore and protect remittance channels at meaningful scale, recognizing that remittances are a primary survival mechanism for Cuban households. • Condition the continuation of sanctions authorities on measurable civilian-impact safeguards and transparent humanitarian monitoring. • Prohibit any military escalation or coercive action that would further destabilize the island and intensify displacement across the region. • Authorize emergency humanitarian engagement through multilateral and regional partners to prevent collapse of essential services. The United States can support accountability and human rights in Cuba without fueling humanitarian deterioration. Those objectives are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a policy that contributes to hunger, medical shortages, or preventable suffering undermines our credibility and weakens the very human rights principles we claim to defend. Policies that inflict broad civilian pain without producing structural political change demand reassessment. Congress has both the constitutional authority and the moral obligation to ensure that U.S. measures do not become drivers of humanitarian harm. The situation is urgent. Action must be as well.