On September 16, 2025, a bombshell report by Prisoners Defenders thrust the Cuban prison system into the international spotlight, exposing the forced labor of more than 60,000 inmates across the island. The report, the first of its kind, meticulously documents testimonies, legal violations, and the economic machinery that underpins what many now call a modern-day system of slavery within Cuba’s penal institutions. But just days earlier, on September 12, a U.S. court decision reverberated through the Cuban diaspora and beyond: the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the Trump administration’s mass revocation of lawful status for hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole recipients—including many from Cuba—was legal. Together, these events paint a stark picture of the plight facing Cubans both at home and abroad.
According to Atalayar, the Prisoners Defenders report compiles 53 firsthand testimonies from inmates, backed by quantitative and qualitative evidence that lays bare a litany of abuses. The report is unflinching: “This report exposes the alarming situation of forced labour in Cuban prisons, revealing and demonstrating, without a shadow of a doubt, the painful and criminal situation of forced labour carried out by the state for economic and punitive purposes.” The association’s investigation points to at least 242 forced labor prisons—‘main prisons’ and satellite ‘camps,’ ‘farms,’ or ‘correctional facilities’—all forming a network designed to extract economic value from prisoners through coercion, suffering, and abuse.
The violations are manifold. Prisoners are coerced into work without consent or contracts, face physical violence, are denied fair wages, and endure harsh working conditions with little to no breaks. Fourteen of the 53 interviewed inmates reported not receiving even a single short break during the workday, while the remaining 39 described breaks of just 20 to 30 minutes. The forced labor tasks range from agricultural production—such as cutting sugar cane and producing marabou charcoal—to construction, factory work, garbage collection, street cleaning, and even the manufacture of Havana cigars. According to the report, “The Cuban prison system not only violates the Mandela Rules, the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), the ILO (International Labour Organisation) Conventions and all international labour standards, but also constitutes a machinery of repression and extraction of economic value through coercion, suffering and abuse.”
One particularly brutal form of forced labor is the production of marabou charcoal. In 2023, Cuba exported $61.8 million worth of this charcoal—produced by tens of thousands of inmates—making it the world’s ninth-largest exporter. Major buyers include Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Turkey. The report names Spanish companies such as Carbones Loira, BarbecueWorld, and PRALIPORT as marketers of this product, raising uncomfortable questions about international complicity. As the report notes, “All or many of the importers either ignore the fact that this state-produced marabou charcoal is made using forced labour, or are well aware of this fact as a means of obtaining unbeatable prices and margins.”
Similar exploitation is found in tobacco production. The state-run Tabacuba company manages a model where civilians and prisoners work side by side, but with starkly different conditions. Civilian workers receive a salary of around 40,000 Cuban pesos per month, while prisoners—lured by false promises of fair contracts—labor for far longer hours and receive wages so meager they barely register. The European Union stands as the largest importer of Cuban cigars. The report highlights the disparity: “Upon arrival in Europe, the European consumer pays an average of €17.9 per cigar, or $21.00 per cigar. In other words, with regard to the retail price, the gross margin of European marketers is 85.47%, that of the Cuban government is 14.53%, and that of the prisoner is 0.015%.”
The abuses are not evenly distributed. Women prisoners face gender-specific violations, including being forced to clean excrement without gloves and, in some cases, enduring sexual harassment—even during advanced pregnancy. Political prisoners, meanwhile, are typically assigned less harsh tasks, a calculated move to prevent them from denouncing these abuses. Afro-Cuban inmates face even greater discrimination and are disproportionately subjected to the harshest conditions, a fact corroborated by the 2024 report of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which found a large number of Afro-Cubans in Cuban prisons.
The broader context is equally grim. According to Human Rights Watch’s 2025 world report, Cuba is grappling with a severe economic crisis that affects basic rights, including access to health and food. Repression is rampant; those who protest face torture and imprisonment. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) reports that 89% of families live in extreme poverty, with unemployment at 12% among adults and nearly half of the employed working for the state. Cuba’s external debt, according to Emilio Morales, president and CEO of Havana Consulting Group, stands at over $40 billion. Morales is blunt in his assessment: “The only way out of this national catastrophe is the total replacement of the political and economic system that has been suffocating Cuba for decades.”
As Cubans struggle at home, many seek refuge abroad—yet find new barriers. On September 12, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled in Svitlana Doe v. Noem that the Trump administration’s termination of humanitarian parole for about 500,000 beneficiaries from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela was legal. The ruling, as reported by the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), not only revokes lawful status and work authorization for those in the CHNV humanitarian parole program but also casts a shadow over other humanitarian parole programs, such as Uniting for Ukraine and Operation Allies Welcome.
Guerline Jozef, HBA’s Executive Director, condemned the decision: “This decision is specifically about CHNV humanitarian parole, but it has significant implications for the other humanitarian parole programs at issue in the Svitlana litigation, such as Uniting for Ukraine and Operation Allies Welcome—jeopardizing the lawful status of hundreds of thousands more currently living and working in the US.” Karen Tumlin, founder and director of the Justice Action Center, called it “an urgent and grave threat to all of us who believe in due process and equal protection under the law.” Legal advocates have vowed to continue their fight in district court, arguing that the administration’s actions are “actively creating a larger class of people who are subject to deportation—even those who followed the exact processes the US government required of them.”
Jozef was clear about the broader stakes: “This has never actually been about ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ immigrants, rather it’s about stripping the lawful rights from as many vulnerable communities as possible in order to advance a cruel and lawless agenda. Let us not forget that we are talking about people who have done everything the US government has asked of them, yet continue to be targeted by the calculated cruelty of the Trump administration.”
Historically, both Democratic and Republican administrations have used parole processes to promote family unification, humanitarian interests, and migration management, as noted by the HBA. Now, with this ruling, hundreds of thousands of people who sought a life free from repression and poverty may find themselves in legal limbo, their futures once again uncertain.
As the world looks on, the dual crises—forced labor in Cuban prisons and the precarious status of Cuban migrants in the United States—underscore the urgent need for international attention and action. For many Cubans, the hope for dignity and justice remains agonizingly out of reach, both inside and outside their homeland.
