Miami-Dade mayor to Trump: No 'backroom deal' to keep Castros in power in Cuba

Douglas Hanks, Miami Herald on Mar 25, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

MIAMI — Miami-Dade’s Democratic mayor this week said that any real political change forced on Cuba by the Trump administration must leave the Castro family fully out of power.

“Reports of secret negotiations with Raul Castro’s grandson concern me deeply,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a video address posted Tuesday, referring to the Trump administration’s alleged confidential talks with Havana that first leaked in early February. “Swapping one Castro dynasty figure for another is not transition. It is continuation.”

Her release of the video coincided with a “Cuba Libre” rally Tuesday in Hialeah that had multiple Republican speakers, including the city’s mayor and Alex Otaola, a Cuban American YouTube host who is leading a recall effort against her.

In her taped remarks posted on social media, Levine Cava was offering preemptive criticism should a Trump-brokered deal not include the Castro family relinquishing their unofficial authority over the Cuban government.

The elder Castro took over for brother Fidel Castro, who died in 2016. Raul Castro is considered still effectively in charge of Cuba, despite stepping down from the presidency in 2018 in favor of the nation’s current official leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Levine Cava is in the middle of her second and final term as county mayor, a position she first won in 2020. She’s also the first Miami-Dade mayor in 30 years not to be Cuban American. The prior mayor, Carlos Gimenez, is now the only Cuban-born member of Congress.

On Wednesday, Gimenez said Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him the reports of “secret negotiations” with Col. Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro were inaccurate. He also said Levine Cava was mirroring a position Gimenez himself has already made public — and one shared by the vast majority of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade.

“I have made my position very clear on this,” Gimenez said. “The regime must go. I also believe the community will not accept a role in post-Communist Cuba for any Castro.”

In her video, delivered in English and Spanish, Levine Cava said Miami-Dade’s Cuban American population — the largest in the United States — has waited far too long for freedom in Cuba.

“For generations, our community has carried the pain of separation, repression and lost freedom,” she said. “And today as Cuba stands at an historic crossroads, we must be absolutely clear about what the Cuban people deserve. … Not a regime swap. Not another Castro, by blood or by proxy, handed power in a backroom deal.”

_____