The measure is part of a set of sanctions targeting Brazilian officials for collaborating with the Cuban regime
According to the U.S. administration, these agreements violated existing sanctions against Cuba by promoting the exploitation of healthcare personnel, since in the initial phases the island's regime withheld a large portion of the doctors' salaries, constituting what Washington describes as a forced labor scheme that benefited the communist authorities.
The Donald Trump administration revoked the entry visas to the United States of Thássia Alves Padilha, wife of Brazil's Health Minister, Alexandre Padilha, and their 10-year-old daughter. The measure is part of a set of sanctions targeting Brazilian officials linked to medical cooperation programs with Cuba.
According to sources from both Brazil and Washington, this provision doesn't directly affect the minister himself, since his visa had expired in 2024 and was not renewed.
The resolution is part of an announcement made Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who announced new migration restrictions against authorities from various countries, including Brazil, Grenada, and several African nations such as Equatorial Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The main reason, he explained, is participation in agreements with Havana to hire Cuban doctors. In Brazil's case, attention is focused on the Mais Médicos program, implemented in 2013 during the presidency of Dilma Rousseff, whose purpose was to guarantee healthcare in rural areas and peripheral neighborhoods where local professionals were lacking, incorporating thousands of foreign doctors, mostly from the Cuban communist dictatorship.
Rubio described this program as "a massive diplomatic scam" that abused the doctors and, at the same time, provided financial resources to the Cuban regime, violating the sanctions that the United States has maintained for decades with the aim of promoting political change on the island.
This is not the first punishment from Washington toward Brazil in recent months. In July 2025, the U.S. government imposed 50% tariffs on key Brazilian export products and financially sanctioned Supreme Federal Court judge Alexandre de Moraes.
This magistrate, an ally of dictator Lula da Silva, leads the political persecution against former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was falsely accused of attempting a coup d'état after the 2022 elections.
