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WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding the President’s announcement to change U.S. policy with Cuba and lift economic embargos. “We rejoice that Alan Gross’ wrongful imprisonment by the brutal Castro regime has finally come to an end, and that he will be able to spend the holidays with his loved ones. But make no mistake, although we are glad Alan is now free, the agreement the Obama Administration has entered into with the Castro regime has done nothing to resolve the underlying problem. Indeed, it has made it worse. “Fidel and Raul...

Alan Gross is not feeling the Bern. The former aid worker who spent who spent over four years behind bars in Cuba said he can’t tolerate Democratic president candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ praise for some of the Cuban government’s accomplishments. Sanders was one of three senators who visited Gross while he was in a Cuban prison after being accused of being a spy and also helped to secure the aid worker’s eventual release. Gross, who was jailed in 2009, was eventually released in December 2014. “I had the impression that Bernie didn’t see that there was so much...

Should have let him rot there... Cuban prisons are lovely. Remember recently when Obama was attempting to snuggle-up to the vile Castro regime? And how they laughed at our lil' useful idiot -took whatever they could- then asked for much, much more?  While offering us nothing of any significance whatsoever -not even a meager apology for almost bringing the world to the cusp of WWIII in the 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis...? Oh, except they released Alan Gross, the US government contractor working with USAID who smuggled computer equipment and satellite dishes to Cuba's small Jewish community on four separate occasions--...

We live not in the civilization of media, but of the mediocre. And from there directly we inhabit the miserable. Cubans desperately need witnesses to our tragedy. In the absence of politicians on the Island, we pin our hopes on any alternative voice: bloggers, musicians, graffiti artists, performers, etc. Just recently a supposed North American hostage has been released. Alan Gross completed his role in the democratic-totalitarian theater of legitimization of the Castro dictatorship. He is now free, but he remains stuck in the labyrinth of his lawyers and the six-figure compensation with which they have invited him to recuperate...

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) was traveling back and forth to Cuba in secret negotiations to try and secure a release for American prisoner Alan Gross when a woman approached him with an impassioned plea: she wanted a child and she needed his help. The woman, the wife of one of the Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. on espionage charges, was in her early 40s and said she was almost out of time. According to Tim Rieser, Leahy’s foreign policy aide, she was “clearly desperate.” That began an unusual effort on the part the senator, who is chairman of the...

After years in Cuban captivity, Alan Gross is free. But what has he come home to?

>The conclusion of an agreement to normalize diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba has the White House treading cautiously, especially after bipartisan condemnation from Cuban-American Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez. The latter, who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee until yesterday, accused Barack Obama of “vindicat[ing] the brutal behavior of the Cuban government” and of “set[ting] an extremely dangerous precedent.” Menendez is of course a Democrat and ostensibly an ally of the White House on foreign policy.In anticipation, at least one official in the Obama administration has decided it’s better to share the credit, and preferably with someone whose...

Held for five years in Cuba, 65-year-old American contractor Alan Gross has been released from prison and is en route to U.S. soil, ABC News has learned exclusively. In a landmark humanitarian prisoner exchange to be announced by President Obama shortly at the White House, the agreement was reached following more than a year of secret back channel talks at the highest levels of both governments. Today’s release of Gross, who is said to be in poor physical condition, represents a first step toward normalizing relations with the neighbor just 90-miles off the Florida coast. Gross was convicted of espionage...

Havana (AFP) - A former Cuban spy urged Washington Monday to swap three detained agents for the freedom of American Alan Gross, citing the deal that saw a US soldier released over the weekend. Gross, 65, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Cuba in 2011 after being convicted of "acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state" for allegedly distributing communications equipment as a USAID contractor.

THE CUBAN HOSTAGE CRISIS DAY 1460 Humberto Fontova 12/3/2013 Humberto Fontova On December 3rd, 2009, Castro’s KGB-trained police arrested Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen working in Cuba on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Gross has languished in a KGB-designed prison cell ever since. His crime was bringing cell phone and Internet equipment into Castro’s fiefdom to help Cuba’s tiny Jewish community communicate more freely with the outside world. A reminder: Pre-Castro Cubans enjoyed some of the most advanced communications systems in the world. In 1958 Cuba boasted more phones and TVs per capita than most European...

HAVANA (AP) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson ended a four-day visit to Cuba on Monday without getting to visit a U.S. government development subcontractor who is serving a 15-year sentence in the Caribbean nation. The civil rights activist said he had requested access to Alan Gross of Maryland, but island authorities told him it couldn’t be arranged in time. “I certainly inquired about him. No American can come here in good conscience and not ask about him,” Jackson said. “I would hope we would maintain our vigil in trying to gain his release.”

Gross’s work involved distributing computer and satellite phone equipment to members of the island’s Jewish community so they could use the Internet, according to his family and U.S officials.

VATICAN CITY – This week’s 50th anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s excommunication of Cuban leader Fidel Castro coincides with preparations for a visit to the Communist-ruled island by the current pontiff, Benedict XVI. Castro was excommunicated a month and a day after his Dec. 2, 1961, speech proclaiming himself a Marxist-Leninist and announcing his plans to lead Cuba to communism. John XXIII supported that measure in the 1949 decree of Pope Pius XII, which established the penalty of excommunication for anyone spreading communism. The revolution headed by Castro had already proclaimed itself “socialist,” and later the state declared itself to...

Last week’s 60 Minutes featured another in its long line of joint CBS-Castro productions. This time Anderson Cooper and his production crew partnered with the Stalinist regime’s Centro de Investigaciones Marinas for a propaganda piece on the marvels of Cuban coral reef conservation. The co-host of the CBS show and conduit for this fruitful Communist infomercial was Dr. David Guggenheim, senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation in Washington, D.C. who chairs its Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Program. Dr. Guggenheim toasts himself as a “Cubaphile” and toasts Castro’s fiefdom (which he has visited over 40 times in recent years) as...

Jewish American Alan Gross not among thousands to be freed in a sweeping amnesty ahead of papal visit. HAVANA - Cuba will release 2,900 prisoners in the coming days for humanitarian reasons in a sweeping amnesty ahead of a visit next spring by Pope Benedict XVI, the Cuban government said on Friday. Those to be pardoned do not include Jewish American Alan Gross, serving 15 years in prison for setting up Internet equipment on the island under a secretive US program in a case that stalled progress in US-Cuba relations, a government spokesman said. Cuban President Raul Castro said the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States offered to let a convicted Cuban spy return home in exchange for the release of an imprisoned American, but Cuba rebuffed the offer, U.S. officials said. The U.S. also indicated it would be willing to address other Cuban grievances after Havana had released imprisoned contractor Alan Gross, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sensitivity of the issue. Cuba rejected the offer, noting that the Cuban, Rene Gonzalez, already had served most of his sentence. It wanted pardons for at least some of the four other Cubans convicted with...

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's highest court upheld a U.S. government subcontractor's 15-year prison sentence for crimes against the state on Friday, ending the legal side of a case that has chilled already-icy relations between Washington and Havana. The ruling means 62-year-old Alan Gross, a Maryland native who has been behind bars for more than a year and a half, has no further judicial recourse to appeal his sentence. It leaves him, his family and U.S. officials hoping instead for a release on humanitarian grounds. Gross, who has been behind bars since his arrest in December 2009, was found guilty in...

A familiar mistrust descends. hopes that Mr Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro, would end a 50-year freeze in relations between their countries have proved wildly premature. Mr Obama began with some gestures. The latest round of talks took place in late February. They were overshadowed by familiar rows. The American officials demanded the release of Alan Gross, who was working under contract to USAID and was arrested in Havana in December. His family says he was helping Jewish groups in Cuba ... Four days after the talks Orlando Zapata, an imprisoned dissident, died in custody in a Havana...