Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro proposed the plan to ALBA member states, which include Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Lucia. No further details were offered about the plan.

Cuban doctors volunteer to go on these missions, where they are paid many times more than what they make in Cuba.

Cuba’s international medical cooperation missions have operated in dozens of countries worldwide since the 1960s. They usually provide healthcare for the poorest of the poor in Global South countries.

“We are taking a global push to encourage countries to step out of this program,” Dueholm answered.

González was also behind the politically motivated Medical Professional Parole program, which allowed Cuban health workers on missions to apply for U.S. visas. The program was ended by President Barack Obama in 2017.

Marco Rubio and other U.S. politicians have pushed that narrative and pressured countries to stop receiving Cuban medical services in recent years.

González, a standard-issue Miami hardliner when it comes to Cuba policy, was a prominent early proponent of classifying Cuba’s international medical cooperation missions as “human trafficking.”

She defeated Cuban-American Emilio González, who was endorsed by Trump and served as head of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) during the second George W. Bush administration.

Cuba has consistently called for the closure of the base, opposed its use as a prison and demanded that the 45 square miles of territory the U.S. has occupied since 1898 is returned.

More than 700 people have been held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at GTMO since January. The plan to use GTMO to process deportees sparked fierce criticism from human rights groups.

It is unclear where the men would be sent next. Several Cubans have been deported to African countries like South Sudan and Eswatini.

As part of an ongoing class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a federal judge ruled earlier this month that the administration was not authorized by federal law to hold migrants at overseas military installations.

But what has received little media coverage and what the Trump administration dares not acknowledge is that on counternarcotics, Cuba is arguably the U.S. government’s most reliable regional ally.

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It's also been widely reported that Venezuela is not a significant source of drug problems in the United States.

Trump earlier this month also suspended pending citizenship, green card and asylum applications for immigrants from countries “of concern,” including Cuba. More than a thousand Cubans have been deported to the island this year.

These include Biden’s CBP One and “humanitarian parole” programs, whose termination put many of the half million Cubans who benefited from them at risk of deportation.