The California AFL-CIO just passed a resolution demanding Cuba be removed from America's terror list.
Now senators want to know who wrote it.
That answer leads straight to a union hall in Wilmington, California – and a communist diplomat on a big-screen TV.
IAM Machinists Union Let a Cuban Foreign Influence Operative Run Its Meeting
On May 9, 2026, members of the International Association of Machinists gathered at their local hall on Avalon Boulevard in Wilmington, California.
The meeting was billed as an emergency speak-out against U.S. sanctions.
What it actually was: a lobbying session run by a foreign government.
David Ramírez Álvarez, second secretary at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, beamed into the room on a wide-screen television via Zoom.
He greeted union members and activists by first name.
Then he got to work.
Ramírez Álvarez walked the room through Senate votes, told members which pieces of legislation the Cuban regime wanted them to support, and called the U.S. trade embargo an "act of war" and "genocidal action against a society and a people."
Kevin Kucera, District President of the International Association of Machinists, was there.
Mark Friedman, an IAM representative and leader of the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee, told the crowd exactly where things stood.
"The job now is defending Cuba in whatever way we can," Friedman said.
Federal officials are investigating whether those activities – and others like them across six U.S. cities where Ramírez Álvarez has appeared – required registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Friedman was also a key organizer behind the effort that led the California AFL-CIO to pass a resolution demanding Cuba be removed from America's terror sponsor list.
A Cuban Embassy diplomat coached the campaign. An IAM representative delivered the result.
Sen. Bill Cassidy Opens Senate Investigation Into IAM Union Cuba Ties
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, sent the IAM a letter.
The committee wants to know whether union employees were working with Cuban officials while on the clock, whether the union has ever accepted payments from Cuba, and whether any payments went to individuals connected to the regime.
It also wants a full accounting of every member or leader who engaged in Cuba-related advocacy – and whether any of them coordinated that work directly with Cuban government officials.
"I am concerned that IAM Union member dues are financing efforts to change U.S. policy related to the Cuban regime, a State Sponsor of Terror, instead of supporting American workers' priorities," Cassidy wrote.
Cassidy pointed to a video the Cuban Embassy itself posted online – featuring an IAM leader declaring, "We must and will continue to defend the sovereignty of Cuba and Cuban self-determination."
In a second video, that same leader delivered a welcome address to two Cuban officials on behalf of his union.
The IAM calls itself America's largest defense union, representing tens of thousands of veterans and workers who build the aircraft, ships, and equipment the U.S. military depends on.
Those workers' dues were funding this.
Cuban Espionage and Union Infiltration Have a Long History in America
This is not one rogue local, and it is not a new problem.
Lenin understood exactly what unions were for.
"The trade unions are a school of communism," he wrote in 1921 – and Soviet strategists treated that as an instruction manual for the next seven decades.
Communist Party members ran the United Electrical Workers outright – two of its three national officers were on the party line.
Harry Bridges, a Communist Party-aligned operative, ran the West Coast longshoremen's union for more than forty years while following the Soviet line.
They did not sneak in.
Union leaders with shared politics opened the door and called it solidarity.
That was seventy-five years ago.
The same playbook is running today – except now it is Havana doing the coaching, and the IAM opened the door.
A State Department report published last month exposed Cuba's six-decade campaign to embed agents, recruit activists, and build influence networks inside the United States.
The report named convicted spies who penetrated the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unambiguous: "The Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States."
"They actually are an influence and espionage superpower," Rubio added. "Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them."
Public records place Ramírez Álvarez at organized events in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Kentucky, and Washington, D.C. – and at every stop, American labor was part of the network.
Cassidy's letter also references the 1996 attack in which Cuban MiG fighters shot down two unarmed planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue – killing three American citizens and one permanent resident.
Cuba has been a State Sponsor of Terror ever since.
Now its diplomats are inside American union halls, on the clock, telling defense workers which senators to call.
The IAM told Fox News it would review Cassidy's letter and respond appropriately.
That is not the same thing as a denial.
Sources:
- Robert Schmad, "Cuban Ties Put Powerful US Union Under Microscope Over Alleged Communist Influence Push," Fox News, August 14, 2026.
- "Inside Cuba's Foreign Influence Campaign: From the '60s Venceremos Brigade to a California Union Hall," Fox News Digital, May 26, 2026.
- "Cuba Built Covert Network Inside America Through Spies, Activists and Universities, State Dept Alleges," Fox News, July 21, 2026.
- "Rubio Warns Cuba Has Infiltrated US With Spies, Calls Communist Regime an 'Espionage Superpower,'" Fox News, August 2026.
- "How Cuba Became the Nerve Center of the Anti-American Left," The Daily Signal, July 21, 2026.
