HAVANA (AP) — CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials including Raúl Castro's grandson during a high-level visit to the island Thursday, Cuban and U.S. officials said.
Ratcliffe met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services, and discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security issues. A CIA official confirmed the meetings to the AP.
Ratcliffe was there "to personally deliver President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,'' the CIA official said.
An official statement from Cuba's government noted that Thursday's meeting "took place ... against a backdrop of complex bilateral relations.”
While the U.S. stressed that Cuba cannot continue to be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere,” the Cuban delegation insisted that the island presents no threat to U.S. security. Cuban officials also took issue with the nation's continued inclusion on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Rodríguez Castro previously secretly met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of a Caribbean Community summit in St. Kitts in February. While he’s never occupied a government post, he served as his grandfather’s bodyguard and later as head of Cuba’s equivalent of the Secret Service.
U.S. and Cuban officials also met earlier this year i n Cuba. The ongoing meetings between U.S. and Cuban officials mark the first U.S. government flights to land in Cuba other than at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay since 2016.
Thursday's meeting comes weeks after the Cuban government confirmed that it had recently met with U.S. officials on the island as tensions between the two sides remain high over the U.S. energy blockade of the Caribbean country and as Cuba’s power grid has collapsed and energy to its eastern provinces has been cut. The U.S. blockade of fuel to the island has heightened its economic woes, with reduced work hours and food spoilage as refrigerators stop working.
Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department reiterated that the U.S. will provide Cuba with $100 million in humanitarian assistance and support for satellite internet “if the Cuban regime will permit it.”
In late January, Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba. Though Trump also has threatened to intervene in the country, and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said recently that his country was prepared to fight if that should happen, sources told the AP earlier this month that military action is not imminent.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Tucker reported from Washington, D.C.
This version is corrected to show that the U.S. aid offer is $100 million.
FILE - CIA Director John Ratcliffe listens during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, March 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - CIA Director John Ratcliffe, accompanied by President Donald Trump, speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, April 6, 2026, File)
Six people who were found dead in a rail yard shipping container in Laredo, Texas, were from Honduras and Mexico and included a 14-year-old boy, all part of a human smuggling effort on a freight train, authorities said Thursday.
Police released more details about the discovery made Sunday in Laredo, near the U.S. border with Mexico, but said federal authorities were leading the investigation.
“They did not pass away in our city, but they were discovered here after hours of suffering,” Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said at a news conference. “We are demanding justice for these lives lost. It doesn’t matter where they came from."
The bodies were discovered by a Union Pacific employee. The Webb County medical examiner suspects the deaths were caused by hyperthermia, or heat stroke, a conclusion repeated by the mayor on Thursday.
The six people were put in the shipping container on Saturday in Del Rio, Texas, two days after the train departed from Long Beach, California, Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez Jr. said.
He said the train traveled to the San Antonio area from Del Rio before arriving Sunday in Laredo. Laredo is a busy land port for trade on the U.S.-Mexico border and a common nexus for the illegal movement of people.
“We did not know what we had at the beginning. We did not know that it was a human smuggling situation,” said Rodriguez, who declined to release further details about the route.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said he believes a seventh person in the group also died. The body of a 49-year-old Mexican man was found Monday in the San Antonio area, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Laredo.
“He may have been either thrown from the train after being found deceased or fell from the train and (died) as a result,” Salazar told reporters earlier this week.
The sheriff also disclosed that San Antonio police took a call Saturday from a relative of someone in the shipping container who had been informed about the oppressive conditions. Salazar said police were dispatched but didn't find the container.
“This is my estimate: 120, 150 degrees inside these things,” he said of heat (topping 48 degrees Celsius).
Smuggling on trains has long been a concern partly because trains headed to the United States often slow or stop in Mexico before crossing the border. That creates an opportunity for smugglers or immigrants to climb aboard or hide drugs or other contraband on a train before it enters the U.S.
Two smugglers last year were sentenced to life in prison for what remains the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border. They were convicted in the deaths of 53 migrants found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022.
About 40 people were encountered daily in March crossing illegally by Border Patrol agents in Laredo, making it the third busiest sector among nine along the border with Mexico, according to the agency’s statistics.
In this image taken from video footage provided by KGNS, the Port Laredo Intermodal Terminal sign stands outside a rail yard in Laredo, Texas, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (KGNS via AP)
In this image taken from video footage provided by KGNS, Union Pacific train cars are stationed at a rail yard in Laredo, Texas, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (KGNS via AP)
