As the World Baseball Classic kicks off Thursday, Team Cuba will take the field despite the U.S. denying several team staffers the ability to enter the United States.
The Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation announced last week that pitching coach Pedro Luis Lazo, organization president Juan Reinaldo Pérez Pardo and secretary general Carlos del Pino Muñoz were among eight people denied visas to travel to Puerto Rico for the team’s games starting Friday. All players on the team were reportedly cleared to travel.
The Cuban national baseball team previously faced travel setbacks in September when the federation announced that the Trump administration did not approve his participation in the Classican international competition in which some of the biggest names in the sport participate. (A similar bureaucratic hurdle arose under the Biden administration before the team was allowed to play in the 2023 Classic.)
Cuba is one of several countries subject to travel restrictions imposed by the president last June. The administration has outlined that athletes, coaches and staff participating in major sporting events would not be subject to the restrictions.
HuffPost has reached out to the White House and State Department for comment on the visa denials.
The news comes as President Donald Trump considers a “friendly takeover” of Cuba and his administration is reportedly applying pressure in Havana for regime change in an island nation already devastated by an American fuel blockade.
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The roadblock is part of an alarming pattern in the Cuban sporting community athletes are reportedly having a hard time to travel to the competition in the United States since Trump came to power.
Venezuela, another participating country in the Classic, is also subject to Trump’s travel restrictions. A spokesperson for the Venezuelan team told HuffPost that no team members experienced visa issues ahead of the matches, which begin Friday at Miami’s LoanDepot Park.
With this year’s Classic taking place primarily in the US, Team Cuba’s visa issues indicate how this year’s World Cup could play out under the administration. The international football championship will take place in 16 cities in the US, Canada and Mexico. Teams representing Haiti, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Iran – countries under Trump’s travel restrictions – are all set to participate.
Todd Lyons, acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has done just that the agency said would play a key role in security for the World Cup matches on American soil.
“I think it’s going to cause a lot of chaos,” said Michigan-based immigration attorney Amy Maldonado, who represents five MLB teams. in an interview with Sportico.
Maldonado said there have been “unprecedented denials” otherwise approved in recent years and called the Trump administration “the most difficult … to work under” since it began immigration law more than 25 years ago.
In the run-up to the World Cup, at least one top football club has already withdrawn from matches in the United States. Last month, Germany’s Werder Bremen canceled exhibition matches in Detroit and Minneapolis due to the political unrest caused by Trump’s immigration policy.
