Six matters in the Coalition’s register concern Cuban nationals resisting removal. Cuba signed the Convention against Torture on 27 January 1986 and ratified it on 17 May 1995. It has never accepted the article 22 procedure, so no individual can take a complaint about Cuba to the Committee against Torture.
Why this page exists
Cuba is not a state that removes people. It has no arrangement with the United States to receive anybody, and it does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project. It appears here because it is one of the countries people in the register are resisting being returned to, and because a United States immigration judge has granted protection against removal to it.
What Cuba has accepted, and what it has not
Cuba is among the parties to the Convention against Torture. The depositary record shows signature on 27 January 1986 and ratification on 17 May 1995, nine years later.
What Cuba has not done is accept the individual complaint procedure. Article 22 of the Convention works only against a state that has declared it recognises the Committee’s competence to receive complaints from individuals. Cuba has made no such declaration. Its declarations on the depositary record concern the granting of independence to colonial countries and the settlement of disputes through diplomatic channels. Neither opens a route for a person.
The practical effect is that the treaty binds Cuba and no one subject to its jurisdiction can complain to the Committee about a breach.
What the Committee against Torture found
The Committee examined Cuba and adopted concluding observations on 9 May 2022, at its seventy-third session. In the section on the events of 11 July 2021, at paragraph 42, it recorded:
“The Committee expresses its concern at United Nations reports of alleged arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force and ill-treatment during the social protests of 11 July 2021”
On conditions of detention, at paragraph 22, the Committee recorded allegations of “the systematic ill-treatment and torture of inmates, including physical and verbal abuse, unjustified restrictions on visiting, transfers to prisons far from the prisoner’s family and prolonged solitary confinement”.
What the register records
The clearest matter is Ibarra-Perez v. United States, Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 27 August 2025. An immigration judge granted Jorge Felix Ibarra-Perez withholding of removal to Cuba. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed him instead to Mexico, a country that had never been designated in his removal proceedings. He objected repeatedly. After two days in Mexico he returned to the United States and sued for damages.
Five further matters in the register concern Cuban nationals. All are reachable from the register of court decisions.
Sources
Treaty status: United Nations Treaty Collection, depositary record for the Convention against Torture, chapter IV-9, read 14 September 2026.
Committee against Torture, concluding observations on the third periodic report of Cuba, CAT/C/CUB/CO/3, adopted 9 May 2022: docs.un.org.