Cuba aid envoy participants say they were detained, questioned at Miami International Airport

Claire Heddles, Miami Herald on Mar 26, 2026

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MIAMI – Activists coming back to the United States from a humanitarian trip to Cuba were detained at Miami International Airport Wednesday, according to multiple people from the aid envoy.

At least 20 of the more than 100 people who participated in Nuestra América Convoy were held for interrogation when they returned to Miami this week, participants said. The effort was led by groups including CodePink and Progressive International.

Customs and Border Protection also seized at least 18 devices from the travelers, including phones and laptops, CodePink staffers said.

CBP did not respond to a request for comment. The airport referred all questions to the federal agency.

Most of the aid envoy returned on a chartered flight Monday and were not stopped and held for questioning, participants told the Miami Herald, but a handful of participants who stayed longer and flew back on a commercial flight Wednesday faced interrogations on their arrival.

According to CBP data, border searches of electronic devices are rare, but authorized under Supreme Court precedent. The envoy members returning from Cuba this week said they were targeted for search for political reasons.

“They’ve targeted activists, they’ve targeted me particularly, and so I wasn’t surprised. But all the same, it’s extremely violating and it’s an infringement on your privacy, completely,” CodePink’s DC coordinator Olivia DiNucci told the Herald.

She said she was one of only a couple travelers from the group who got their phones back from CBP. She expects the rest to receive their devices back by mail in the coming weeks.

Caroline Kingsbury, a New York-based nurse who joined the convoy, said she was one of the few people to retain her phone after she was questioned at MIA. “It was wrong and I do feel violated,” she said Wednesday. “I feel like they went in and they looked at my personal business.”

The trip was promoted as both a mission to deliver aid during a worsening humanitarian crisis amid the U.S. oil blockade against the country and a political statement against President Donald Trump’s stated plans for a “friendly takeover” of the island.

But the effort also saw backlash from conservative figures in Miami, including Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who accused CodePink of propping up Cuba’s communist regime and “touring a staged reality while ignoring political prisoners, repression, and a country in collapse.”

Leonardo Flores, CodePink’s Latin America Campaign spokesperson and coalition organizer, said he was another one of the people detained at the airport Wednesday. He said in a video posted on social media that he heard agents joking about targeting the activists for interrogation.

“It disgusts me that they did this to us, but it was to be expected,” Flores said. “The fact that they took my phone and laptop, honestly it was worth it because I got to deliver not only the 6,300 pounds of aid that we brought, but my partner and I brought over a hundred pounds of aid in our own bags and we know that it helped the Cuban people.”