Marco Rubio has long been a fierce critic of dictatorial leaders who have stifled speech in their countries and crushed opposition. As a senator, he spearheaded legislation and condemned “the ongoing repression of dissent” in his parents’ native Cuba and repeatedly called for “expression not repression” in countries like Venezuela.
But now as secretary of state, he’s at the center of the government’s recent actions to deny visa holders entry into the U.S. or arrest and try to deport people, including a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen. Critics of the administration’s measures and those involved in the cases have said they were targeted because of their speech, their support for Palestinians or their criticism of Trump administration policies.
Rubio dismissed backlash last week over the arrest and attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. “This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” Rubio told reporters on March 12. “No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way.”
As secretary of state, Rubio has the right to revoke a green card or a visa under a 1952 immigration law, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt recently told reporters, though legal scholars say the government has to prove why it’s warranted.
Some experts who have followed Rubio’s career see a dissonance between his actions as secretary of state and what he advocated as a senator, especially his intolerance for political repression, undercutting his authority to demand the restoration of democratic freedoms elsewhere.
“It’s rank hypocrisy,” said Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Drezner, who has written about Rubio’s political evolution, said the secretary of state has done a “180”-degree turn from what he’s stood for in his political career.
Drezner said Rubio’s hawkishness toward Latin America, and particularly Cuba, is a constant in his political career. “Maybe the thought is he’s saying and doing things that contradict the substance of his critique of Cuba,” Drezner said, “but if by doing that, he still gets to critique Cuba and have Donald Trump agree with him, maybe that in itself, in Rubio’s mind, may be worth it.”
There’s no shortage of video, transcripts and legislative action in which Rubio defends democratic principles such as freedom of assembly and vilifies countries that repress those freedoms.
After Sen. Tim Kaine discussed on the Senate floor his trip to Cuba in 2014 — the year then-President Barack Obama normalized relations with the country — Rubio responded with a searing speech saying Cuba was “good at repression” and exporting it to places like Venezuela. He cited the example of Leopoldo Lopez, the former mayor of Caracas. “He’s sitting in jail right now because he’s protesting against the government,” he said at the time.
In 2022, Rubio protested Cuba’s participation in the ninth Summit of the Americas because its president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, had “criminalized criticism” of the government.
In response a State Department spokesperson repeated Rubio’s comments that the issue isn’t about free speech, adding that while the department doesn’t discuss individual visa cases, all visa applicants “are continuously vetted” by the government.
