What is a Cuban Interior Ministry colonel doing in New York this week?

A high-ranking official with Cuba’s Interior Ministry, an agency sanctioned by the United States for its role in human rights violations, was granted a visa to travel to New York as part of an official Cuban government delegation attending the United Nations General Assembly this week.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry did not mention the presence of Col. Mario Méndez Mayedo — who heads the key Interior Ministry department handling migration and issues involving foreign citizens — in a statement listing the delegation members traveling to New York.

However, an opinion piece published by the official news outlet Cubadebate identified him as one of the Cuban officials who met with Cuban Americans at the Cuban mission to the U.N. in New York. The Interior Ministry is in charge of state security, among other responsibilities.

A State Department spokesperson said that “the United States takes seriously its obligations as host country of the U.N. under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement, including the issuance of visas for certain travel to the U.N. headquarters district.”

Méndez has not appeared in pictures released by Cuban official government accounts of the delegation’s activities and meetings linked to the U.N. events this week. It doesn’t seem he traveled to discuss migration with Biden administration officials either.

The State Department declined to say whether Cuban and U.S. officials would meet on the sides of the U.N. high-level week, but an administration source said there are no planned meetings between the delegations.

Méndez has previously participated in official talks with U.S. officials on migration.

In 2016, he traveled to Miami to discuss human trafficking and migration fraud with Obama administration officials.

During the current visit, Méndez’s only public event so far has been the gathering at the Cuban mission, where he and Ana Teresa Gonzalez, who leads a Foreign Ministry division handling the Cuban government’s relationship with the island’s diaspora, explained to the audience new migration and citizenship laws passed by the National Assembly last July.

The laws were drafted by the Interior Ministry and presented by Méndez to legislators during the July session.

According to the Cubadebate report, Méndez told the embassy audience that the migration law eliminates restrictions that had prevented Cubans from keeping their properties on the island if they stayed abroad longer than 24 months. However, the law’s final text has not been published, and an earlier version discussed at the National Assembly contained new requirements tying property rights to residing in the country for an unspecified period of time each year.

The migration law also gives the Interior Ministry ample powers to cite national security and “hostile” political actions against the government” to impose travel bans on Cubans and foreigners, an unwritten policy that had already been enforced prior to the new legislation. The citizenship law goes as far as granting the Cuban president the authority to strip Cuban nationals of their citizenship if they engage in acts contrary to the “political, economic and social interests” of the country.

The Miami-based Human Rights Foundation has included Méndez in a database of Cuban officials accused of human-rights violations for his role in the banning of dissidents and critics of the government from leaving or entering the country.

The government admitted in July that more than a million Cubans had left the island in just two years, in 2022 and 2023, the largest exodus in Cuba’s recent history, fueled by poverty and political oppression. Most have come to the U.S.

But at the gathering with the group of Cuban Americans at the Cuban mission to the U.N., Cuban officials touted the government’s efforts to have a “normal” relationship with Cubans living abroad.

“We have made long-term efforts to fully normalize Cuba’s relations with its emigrants who love their homeland and their families,” said Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.