Press Briefing with Jeremy Lewin, Acting Under Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom on Direct Humanitarian Assistance for the[...]

MODERATOR: Hello. I am Natalia Molano, director of the U.S. Department of State's Miami Media Hub. This is an on-the-record press briefing in English with simultaneous interpretation in Spanish. Please find the globe icon on the lower-left corner of your screen to select your language.

(In Spanish.)

We are privileged to have Jeremy P. Lewin, Acting Under Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom, to discuss the first in a series of direct humanitarian shipments to Cuba as part of the $3 million of assistance for disasters for the Cuban people committed by the Trump Administration, especially following Hurricane Melissa.

We will begin this hub call with opening remarks, and then I will moderate questions from journalists. Acting Under Secretary Lewin, you may begin your remarks.

MR LEWIN: Thank you, and thank you, everyone, for being here. I look forward to the questions. Just a few brief points to emphasize at the top. Ambassador Hammer and I did a walkthrough yesterday of the facility with the president of Catholic Relief Services. First of all, just a huge thank you to the church and to Caritas Cuba. They are taking a tremendous risk. The regime has prevented attempts to distribute aid in the past. We are grateful for the opportunity and the opening here to do it. Sadly, I think it reflects the fact that the situation in Cuba is very dire from a humanitarian perspective. And we mentioned the hurricane, but the hurricane is just a small part of what unfortunately is a growing humanitarian crisis, and it's a manmade humanitarian crisis because of the regime's incompetence, its repression.

And as Secretary Rubio has said and the President has said, Cuba really has the choice - they have a choice. They can do what they've done for the last 60 years and focus on repression and on stealing from their own people and corruption, or they can choose to take care of their people and build a better and freer island. And that choice is very stark right now with what we're doing. So I mean, we're providing - and we went through the walkthrough yesterday - humanitarian supplies. And the Cuban Government has a choice. They can interfere with and steal and divert those supplies - and we will be watching, and if they do that and - then they'll be accountable to their own people, who are suffering, and they'll be accountable to us.

As Secretary Rubio said after the tremendously successful operation to capture the narcoterrorist Maduro and his wife, don't play games with this President. And when President Trump says that he is going to be delivering and when Secretary Rubio says we are going to be delivering aid directly to the Cuban people, we expect that the Cuban Government will let that happen, that they won't politicize it, that they won't interfere with it. And that's just incredibly important to emphasize at the outset.

This is part of setting up a new channel. We've pledged an initial $3 million, but if this works -as I said earlier, the humanitarian situation in Cuba remains dire, and we look forward to providing additional support if we're able to get this channel up and running.

And so just one last thing, just to emphasize our response to Hurricane Melissa was incredibly robust across the Caribbean region, particularly in more permissive environments. So I visited Jamaica right after the hurricane, met with our Department of War assets. Those folks airlifted nearly a million pounds of supplies. It was a critical lifeline to folks that were affected by the hurricane in Jamaica. We pledged nearly $40 million and delivered hundreds of thousands of families with critical supplies - shelter, food, sanitation; visited a Samaritan's Purse hospital they - a hospital on a plane, which is something - we're expanding our work with Samaritan's Purse to help them respond to disasters, particularly in our hemisphere.

So our commitment to Cuba is ironclad, and to the Cuban people, not to the Cuban regime. As the Secretary has said and the President has said, nothing will ever - from this government - will ever go to the Cuban regime. So none of this aid, none of this assistance will benefit - indirectly, directly - the Cuban regime. We've made very, very, very sure that that's the case. And again, if they steal or divert any of this that's intended for the Cuban people, then we will be watching and we will hold them accountable. And again, they will be accountable to the people.

But our commitment to the broader region is ironclad as well. This is our hemisphere. And as the President said after the operation to capture Maduro, American dominance in our hemisphere will not be questioned ever again. And that's partly what happened in Venezuela, dealing with a rogue narcoterrorist state. But it's also building alliances and it's also being a partner in times of need. And so after the hurricane in our region and being here in Miami, we all deal with hurricane season every year. The United States will be there and we're preparing for next hurricane season and the hurricane season beyond that to continue to mount really robust and fulsome responses when these humanitarian crises happen.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We will begin taking questions from journalists. Today's briefing is on the record, attributable to Jeremy P. Lewin, Acting Under Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom.

We will now start with a question from Frances Robles from The New York Times.

QUESTION: Good morning. I guess I'm confused. Is there - is there a contradiction between cutting off the Venezuelan aid - the Venezuelan oil, which is bound to cause a humanitarian crisis, and then at the same time sending a relatively modest package of aid? I also wasn't clear on did the U.S. Government ask the Cuban Government if it wants this aid or has - have those conversations not taken place?

MR LEWIN: So first of all, I think there's no contradiction, because what you're describing, the Venezuelan - the proceeds, the illegitimate proceeds, the Venezuelan oil was not aid. That was payment for - I mean, the Secretary said this. When we went and got Maduro from Miraflores, who did we find guarding him? Cuban security agents. I mean, Cuba had basically colonized Venezuela. Venezuela, that illegitimate dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, had become a client state of Cuba. And so those oil shipments, those were not aid to the Cuban people. And as evidenced by the humanitarian situation in Cuba over the last few years, they were not benefiting the people of Cuba.

What was happening was the Cuban regime was taking illegitimate profits from the narcoterrorists. And so that - that's not something that benefits the Cuban people at all. What we are delivering is aid that will directly benefit the people that the church is going to give directly to people in need. And we - as you point out, we're starting with the amount that we're able to get in with the - under the current circumstances. We didn't ask the regime if they wanted aid, because it's not their aid. They're in no position to take care of their people. They're in no position to make decisions about this.

The Catholic Church and - and we're very grateful for their leadership in this - put out a public letter stating that they would be open to this. And so far the regime has not interfered and has given them, the Catholic Church, the relevant protections to do - permissions to do this. But the Secretary and President have been very, very clear. The Cuban regime has been in league with our ally - our adversaries, from Cuba to Russia to Iran, has colonized Venezuela and been part of the narcoterrorist operation that was going on there. And no U.S. assistance will go to that regime.

And ultimately, the regime has to make a choice to step down or to better provide for its people. But what we're doing here today is making sure that even if they cannot, we have channels, and we're going to continue to try to explore channels that we can provide aid directly to the people.

QUESTION: I guess what I'm getting at, though, is: Is cutting off Venezuelan oil ultimately going to trigger a humanitarian crisis in Cuba?

MR LEWIN: Again, to your point, the oil - to the earlier point, the oil was not benefitting the Cuban people. The oil was being taken by the corrupt and illegitimate regime as a protection payment for protecting the narcoterrorists in Venezuela. That was not something that was helping the Cuban people. And the humanitarian crisis that is going on in Cuba has been going on for many years now, and it's going on because the illegitimate regime that cannot provide for its own people and it cannot provide an economic system that works for them. And so that's the cause of the humanitarian crisis in Cuba, full stop. And the Secretary and President have been very clear that that needs to stop.

MODERATOR: Thank you. We will now go to Jordi Zamora from Excelsior.

QUESTION: Oh, hello?

MODERATOR: Yes, go ahead.

QUESTION: Oh, I was wondering why did it take so long for the aid to be sent. I mean, it's almost three months - two, three months after the hurricane. Did it take long because you were negotiating with the authorities somehow? And -

MR LEWIN: So -

QUESTION: Yeah.

MR LEWIN: So as I pointed out, our broader response to Hurricane Melissa began before the hurricane even hit landfall in the Caribbean region. And we were - immediately after the storms left, we were on the ground in Jamaica, in Haiti, in many other places delivering assistance.

The situation in Cuba is obviously more complicated politically. We - the Church is the one who is taking the lead in this. Obviously, the United States isn't - cannot operate the assistance architecture that we normally would in Cuba, given the political tensions there and the restrictions that the regime places. So the timing of this has to do with the Church getting the right mechanism and permissions. I would say we were not talking to the regime. The Church has been talking to the regime to make sure that they have the adequate permissions to deliver the assistance.

But once more, we view this as part of a broader humanitarian response to Cuba. I mean, the hurricane - although it caused certainly devastation - it's only one part, again, of what's really a tragic and broad humanitarian crisis in Cuba - disease, starvation, deprivation - that's the fault of regime's incompetence and the failing system there. And so we look at this as the first - the beginning of what we hope will be a much broader ability to deliver assistance directly to the Cuban people.

MODERATOR: Thank you. And we will now go over to Simon Lewis from Reuters.

QUESTION: Hi. Can you hear me, Jeremy?

MODERATOR: Go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi. Thank you.

MR LEWIN: Yeah.

QUESTION: Yeah, I - wanted to kind of come back to - you mentioned the timing, the previous question on the timing. This comes, obviously, with the kind of cutting off of these oil shipments. Could you kind of clarify whether - and I think the Cuban Government has already responded to this, kind of saying this is opportunistic. And so I'm wondering if you can clarify. Do you see this - do you see this aid as contradictory or part of the broader administration policy, which seems to be to increase pressure on the Cuban regime? And how does doing this potentially serve that end?

MR LEWIN: Why - I would go back to what I said at the beginning. This is certainly part of the Secretary and President's strategy, which is to say we have - our support for the Cuban people is absolute. But the regime is the one that's preventing them from living their lives and from having the things that they need to live safely and comfortably. And so part of this is sort of making that distinction very, very clear and also giving the regime a choice. As I said at the beginning, they have a choice. They can either let us help the Cuban people directly, or they can choose to interfere with these aid shipments.

And as you pointed out, they're back to their old ways with their propaganda and their lies and their diversions. But ultimately, the Cuban people see this for what it is. They will see boxes of food, real food. We went through yesterday and saw some of the boxes that's going to be showing up, and it's going to be distributed by people that they trust in their communities - the Church that has the reach, with more than a thousand pastors across the country - and they're going to have a choice. The regime can take food from the arms of starving families, and they're going to be accountable to their own people. They're going to be accountable to us, and the whole world is going to see their cruelty for what it is.

So certainly, it's part of the overall strategy. Again, the President and Secretary keep coming back to this: Cuba has a choice. I mean, for a long time they've been hanging on through the colonization of Venezuela and the illicit proceeds of that - of the oil that they were stealing from the Venezuelan people; from their forced labor practices with these doctors that they send all around the world and imprison, take their passport, steal all the money that governments are paying, foreign governments are paying for these medical services. So there are all these sort of sordid ways that the Cuban Government has been able to sustain itself - not the Cuban people, which they've utterly failed, but they've been able to sustain themselves through all these corrupt practices.

But that's all done under President Trump. I mean, we've made exactly clear what's going to happen, particularly in our hemisphere. And certainly, the operation to capture Maduro and what's going on in Venezuela should make clear to the Cuban regime and every other despot around the world that you don't play games with President Trump, that that era of weakness and disorder and strife and foreign interference in our hemisphere is done.

And so the Cuban regime, as the President has said - they're at a difficult - and the right thing to do is for them to leave and let the Cuban people be free. We don't have any illusions that they're going to do that, but if they don't do that, then we're going to continue to try to find ways to protect and support the Cuban people directly. And yes, if that puts pressure on the regime, rightfully so, because who is responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Cuba? It's the Cuban regime and the people who've stolen the resources of that island and held it down for 60 years.

MODERATOR: Thank you. We will now go to Yvette Lewis from Telemundo 51.

QUESTION: Yeah. Hi. Good morning. How is this aid arriving there? What is the company sending out that plane? Who owns it? Also, has this - any aid has already been arriving before?

MR LEWIN: Yeah. So with the - the charter flights are arranged by a State Department contractor in coordination with the Catholic Church, and then - so they arrived - the first one arrived in Holguín, and they're going to arrive in a few of the other provinces. And then there's also ship-based transfer of assistance. I think the Church has worked hard to make sure that they have the right points where the aid arrives so that they can distribute it efficiently and accountably within the communities. So we've worked with them on that, and as I pointed out, they had to find ways to get around and sort of receive the permissions from the Cuban Government.

We're procuring all of the commodities outside of Cuba, and as you saw yesterday, we are delivering the assistance directly, prepackaged and everything. So again, that reduces the opportunity for the Cuban regime to profit off of or steal any of this assistance. They would have to be literally ripping boxes of food out of families' hands, and I wouldn't put that below this regime, but that - so that (inaudible) and that's how we expect to be able to deliver a lot more assistance in the coming weeks.

MODERATOR: Thank you. I'd like to now call on Andres Fidanza from El Observador.

QUESTION: Hi. Thank you very much for doing this. Do you have any projections regarding when the Cuban regime may fall, as President Trump suggested?

MR LEWIN: We don't know what (inaudible). I would not want to get ahead of the President and Secretary on those types of issues. Just say it for myself, one hopes that Cuba can be free as soon as possible.

MODERATOR: Jeremy, your audio was getting a bit spotty. Would you mind repeating your answer, please? Thank you. For the transcript.

MR LEWIN: I certainly wouldn't want to get ahead of the President and the Secretary on those very significant questions. But I - again, I would just say again for myself we hope that Cuba can be free as soon as possible.

MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. I will now call on Veronica Rosario from Diario Libre.

QUESTION: (In Spanish.)

MR LEWIN: Thank you. It's a great question. So when Hurricane Melissa hit we were able to deploy a team to Dominican Republic and we were able to mobilize our relationships with partners to deliver several million dollars' worth of assistance right in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. We have a close relationship with the Dominican government.

I was actually at SOUTHCOM yesterday to talk about how we can build up our ability to train and equip partner governments and civil society to respond to disaster, disaster resilience programs, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. So as we look forward to hurricane season this coming year, I expect that we're going to have a number of additional programs to announce with governments, including hopefully the Dominican government.

We also are signing new response contractors with - contracts with (inaudible) that have big response networks so that we can better leverage their assets in the wake of natural disasters and help them with steady state as well. So again, as the President said, in our national security strategy layout, the Western Hemisphere is a huge focus of this administration's foreign policy and there's a lot of discussion about what we're doing to reassert American dominance in our hemisphere from a security perspective, but it's every bit as important that we forge valuable security and economic partnerships, that we build markets together, and also that we help our allies in times of need and help them be prepared for disasters.

So it's absolutely something we are looking at. There have been a number of independent analyses of the response that we were able to mount to Hurricane Melissa, and even though that was a very late-breaking hurricane that changed its path, all the independent analysis - I'd encourage you to go look at one from the Council of Foreign Relations; talked about how this was a - I think they called it a textbook surge of humanitarian assistance that happened immediately after the hurricane in all of the environments - other than Cuba - where we have governments like the Dominican government that are close allies and allow us in and allow American aid workers in immediately.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Now we're going to the last two questions. We have a question from a Brazilian outlet, from Reinaldo Galhardo from Agencia SNEWS Sorocaba.

QUESTION: Thank you very much. I am journalist in - I am journalist in Sorocaba city, Sao Paulo state, Brazil. It's a pleasure to talk with you. Will all the difficult in helping Cuba by overcome?

MODERATOR: Reinaldo, could you please repeat your question one more time? It was not easy to understand.

QUESTION: Okay. Will all the difficult in helping Cuba by overcome?

MODERATOR: What are the difficulties in helping Cuba, and the last part was?

QUESTION: Yes, (inaudible).

MODERATOR: Okay. What are the difficulties in helping Cuba?

MR LEWIN: I mean, again, the most difficult challenge is the regime. As I was just saying, in all of these other environments where we have governments - I mean, I was meeting the prime minister of Jamacia, the Dominican, I mean, a bunch of these other countries where we've got good relationships with the government and they're invested in helping their own people succeed and recover, unlike the Cuban regime; then we're able to surge in supplies immediately, we're able to start building infrastructure that helps people, we're able to work with civil authorities.  None of that is possible in Cuba, because the Cuban regime, again, is committed more to repression and insularity than it is to the welfare of the Cuban people, right?  And they're more interested in spying on people and locking them up in jail for civil protests and things like that. 

So that's the biggest challenge.  It's always been the challenge in Cuba.  I mean, again, it's tragic like this, and there's been one problem in Cuba for half a century, and it's been the Castro regime, and that's the biggest challenge in reaching people now. I mean, if it were up to us, if there was no regime, we'd be talking about tens, hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance - billions and billions of dollars of investment and development and opportunity. And really, that's what lies on the other side of the regime for the Cuban people. I mean, I - the Cuban regime will not be able to continue abusing its people for much longer. And when it inevitably does collapse, we will be ready to surge resources. And not just U.S. Government resources; I know the diaspora in Miami, elsewhere, are eager to reinvest, to redevelop, to repair Cuba when that time comes.

MODERATOR: Thank you. And the last question I will read from the Q&A. This is from Dánica Coto, Caribbean correspondent for the Associated Press. And the journalist is seeking comment in response to the statement from the foreign minister of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez, and she quotes it: "The U.S. Government is exploiting what appears to be a humanitarian gesture for opportunistic and politically manipulative purposes. As a matter of principle, Cuba does not oppose assistance from governments or organizations, provided it benefits the people and the needs of those affected are not used for political gain under the guise of humanitarian aid." That's the end of the question.

MR LEWIN: Yeah, I think it's very clear - we took a number of journalists to see exactly what we're delivering, in coordination with the Catholic Church; there's nothing political about cans of tuna and rice and beans and pasta. And that is humanitarian aid, and it's at its core - the ones who are doing the politicization are the regime, who want to misdirect and lie.

And of course they do, because the truth lays bear that they are unable to provide for their own people, and that they're unable to provide for their own people because the regime is stealing their resources and holding them down. So it's no wonder that they lie and they divert about these things, but what we're doing is - is clear for everyone to see, and that's why we're very grateful for the church's leadership and their legitimacy in doing this. We have - we have no agenda in delivering boxes of food to the people. The President and the Secretary care deeply about the people of Cuba, understanding how long they've suffered. And again, if - if it's true that the regime welcomes humanitarian aid, then I'd like to donate a lot more. And we'll see whether they are willing to let us.

MODERATOR: Thank you so much. That concludes today's briefing. Thank you for your participation. There will be an English audio recording available online and also a transcript in English, translation into Spanish as well, of this hub call, all on state.gov. If you have any questions, you may contact the Miami media hub at the email [email protected]. Thank you, and goodbye.