Government report: Cuba embargo deters from fighting terrorism
Catching Americans who travel illegally to Cuba may be distracting some American government agencies from higher priority missions such as fighting terrorism, says a government report.
“The report, from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), says that Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, conducts secondary inspections on 20% of charter passengers arriving from Cuba at Miami International Airport,” says The New York Times.
That is more than six times the inspection rate for other international arrivals, even from countries considered shipment points for narcotics, adds the newspaper.
The high rate of inspections and the numerous seizures of relatively benign contraband “have strained CBP’s capacity to carry out its primary mission of keeping terrorists, criminals and inadmissible aliens from entering the country at Miami International Airport,” says the audit.
The audit also called on the Treasury Department to scrutinize the priorities of its Office of Foreign Assets Control.
That office enforces more than 20 economic and trade sanctions programs, including those aimed at freezing terrorists’ assets and restricting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but has long focused on Cuba.
From 2000 to 2006, 61% of the agency’s investigation and penalty caseload involved Cuba embargo cases, says the report.
Critics of the American embargo on Cuba seized on the report as clear evidence that Washington’s policy, which began in the Kennedy administration and has grown more stringent ever since, was outdated.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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