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The GAO report to which this article refers is available at www.gao.gov.

The New York Times

December 19, 2007

Report Finds U.S. Agencies Distracted by Focus on Cuba
By MARC LACEY

Catching Americans who travel illegally to
Cuba or who purchase cigars, rum or other
products from the island may be
distracting some American government
agencies from higher-priority missions like
fighting terrorism and combating narcotics
trafficking, a government audit to be
released Wednesday says.

The report, from the Government
Accountability Office, says that Customs
and Border Protection, which is part of the
Department of Homeland Security, conducts secondary inspections on 20 percent of
charter passengers arriving from Cuba at
Miami International Airport more than six
times the inspection rate for other
international arrivals, even from
countries considered shipment points for
narcotics.

That high rate of inspections and the
numerous seizures of relatively benign
contraband “have strained C.B.P.’s capacity
to carry out its primary mission of keeping
terrorists, criminals and inadmissible aliens
from entering the country at Miami
International Airport,” says the audit, a
copy of which was obtained by The New
York Times.

The audit also called on the Treasury
Department to scrutinize the priorities of
its Office of Foreign Assets Control, which
enforces more than 20 economic and trade
sanctions programs, including those aimed
at freezing terrorists’ assets and restricting
the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, but has long focused on Cuba.

Between 2000 and 2006, 61 percent of the
agency’s investigation and penalty
caseload involved Cuba embargo cases.
Over that period, the office opened 10,823
investigations into possible violations
involving Cuba and just 6,791
investigations on all other cases. The audit
found Critics of the American embargo on
Cuba seized on the report as evidence
that Washington’s policy, which began in
the Kennedy administration and has grown
more stringent ever since, was outdated.

“This is not good policy,” said
Representative Charles B. Rangel,
Democrat of New York, who requested the
report a year ago with Representative
Barbara Lee, Democrat of California. “It’s
vindictive. It’s stupid. It’s costly. And now
we find out it’s a threat to our national
security.”

The State Department, in a statement
responding to the audit, said enforcing
the Trading With the Enemy Act, which
prohibits Americans from spending money
in Cuba without authorization from
Washington, remained an important
tool to isolate the Cuban government.
Loosening the embargo, which the
leading Democratic presidential candidates
have called for in the campaign,
would “provide increased revenue to the
successor dictatorship run by Raúl Castro,
and prolong its tight control over all
aspects of Cuban life,” the department said.

The Bush administration’s tightening of the
Cuba sanctions in 2004 appears to have
discouraged many Americans from visiting
the island. Manuel Marrero, Cuba’s tourism
minister, acknowledged as much in a
recent interview in Havana, blaming
the “blockade,” as Cubans call the
embargo, for scaring Americans away.

“Sooner or later, there will be justice for
the people of the United States, and they
will be allowed to visit and share with our
people,” Mr. Marrero said.

Even with the number of American visitors
down 37,000 in 2006, from 84,500 in 2003,
according to the Cuban government, the
United States government devotes
significant resources to pursuing those
who still go.

Most passengers arriving in Miami from
Cuba are American citizens or residents
who fly on charter flights and have
American government permission to visit
relatives on the island. But they are
forbidden to bring Cuban products back to
the United States. Still, searches regularly
turn up cigars, bottles of rum and
pharmaceutical items in the travelers’
luggage.

Most of the charter flights from Cuba
arrive in Miami around midday, with
five flights landing between 11:30 and
11:40 a.m. and additional flights in the
afternoon.

As those passengers collect their luggage,
most of the three secondary inspection
facilities and most of the customs
personnel are focused on them. As a result,
the audit found, inspection of other
arrivals is sometimes delayed.

Most of the Americans who visit Cuba each
year do not go directly from Miami but use
third countries like Canada, Mexico,
Jamaica or the Bahamas. Catching them is
difficult but not impossible. In some cases,
American immigration officials simply
observe them getting off flights from
Havana at foreign airports where the
United States has a presence, officials say.

Those who are caught violating the
embargo are referred to the Treasury
Department. Officials there say that Cuba
cases, most of which involve unlicensed
travel and the importation of Cuban cigars,
consume a relatively small portion of staff
time and do not affect enforcement of
other sanctions programs.

The Treasury Department relies on
warning letters and informal settlements
for lower fines than on formal
administrative hearings. On top of that,
officials said they have recently begun
focusing more of their resources on
other programs and less on Cuba
enforcement. The statistics bear that out.
Between 2000 and 2005, there were 8,170
violations of the Cuba embargo, which
accounted for more than 70 percent of
the agency’s total penalty cases. In 2006,
however, the number of cases pursued
dropped significantly. That year, only 290
people were fined for violating the
embargo, accounting for 29 percent of the
agency’s penalty cases.

Although the Treasury Department can
assess civil fines of up to $55,000 for
those who violate the embargo, most
penalties are considerably lower. Between
2000 and 2006, the average violation
brought a $992 fine.

In 2007, 13 people have been fined, most
for under $1,000, for ordering Cuban cigars
over the Internet, an increasingly common
violation. One of the largest fines went to
Travelocity, the Internet travel agency,
which had to pay $182,750 for booking
nearly 1,500 flights to Cuba from 1998 to
2004.

James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company