MININT

MININT, the Ministerio del Interior, runs Cuba's entire internal-security apparatus: the national police, prison system, domestic intelligence, border control and the political surveillance units that bear directly on the treatment of dissidents. Founded in 1961 and modelled on the Soviet KGB, it has operated under Communist Party authority throughout its existence and controls State Security (DSE), the Arm that monitors, detains and interrogates critics of the government.

On 18 May 2026 the US State Department designated MININT under Executive Order 14404, naming it alongside the National Revolutionary Police and the Directorate of Intelligence as the three institutional cornerstones of Cuba's repression infrastructure, extending sanctions from the military conglomerate GAESA to the civilian security state itself. On 4 June 2026 OFAC's FAQ 1258 extended secondary-sanctions exposure to any entity in which MININT holds 50 per cent or more ownership, widening the designation's reach without separate SDN entries for each subsidiary.

Havana has rejected the designation as illegal extraterritorial coercion and offered no concession; the ministry holds no meaningful US-dollar assets, so Washington's move functions as a political signal rather than an immediately biting financial measure. MININT's custodial reach extends into the island's record political-prisoner numbers, making it the institutional throughline behind most Cuban detention cases.