CUBA IS SPIRALING into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold.

The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes.

Missing from mainstream news coverage of Trump’s attacks on Cuba and U.S. efforts to impose regime change in the region is a recognition of how Trump’s policies fit into his attacks on immigrants in the U.S., Bustamante says.

“One of the, I think, subtext of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it’s not just about being able to plant the flag and say, ‘We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do,’” Bustamante says.

“It’s also about, we can deport more people. And so how does the Cuban American community react to that? That, I think, is an open question. Something that I haven’t seen linked yet to the conversation about regime change, per se.”