Four years ago, Cuban journalist José Jasán Nieves, editor of the online news site elTOQUE, came to Abraham Calás, its director of innovation and development, with a proposal: why don’t we publish information on the Cuban foreign exchange black market? It was at that time, during the economic restructuring imposed by the so-called Tarea Ordenamiento that sought monetary unification in Cuba, that people began to trade online with the CUP (Cuban Peso) and the MLC (Freely Convertible Currency), without anything or anyone regulating the purchase and sale. Hence the creation of the Representative Rate of the Informal Market (TRMI), a currency tracking service that tells Cubans what the value of the peso is against the dollar, the euro and the MLC (Freely Convertible Currency) – a tool the government now considers its enemy.

“I never thought it would become an object of both desire and hatred for the entire Cuban propaganda apparatus,” Nieves told EL PAÍS. “Nor that they would disrespect the intelligence of the Cuban people so much by suggesting that a website is capable of influencing the entire economy of a country. If that were the case, we would be looking at the weakest government that has ever existed.”

The service is, without a doubt, the most popular in Cuba today. In a dollarized territory, which has never been able to solve the chaos of its multiple currencies, and with inflation at 10%, people wake up and want to know how much the little money they have is really worth. The information is sought in elTOQUE, which now puts the dollar at 450 CUP, a rate that has been rising since January when the exchange rate was 265 CUP. “The problem in Cuba is that there is a lot of demand and little supply: that is, there are very few dollars because there is no tourism, Cuban travel has declined, aid in cash is less common, and instead comes in the form of food or medicine. So, the price of the currency is high and tends to rise. People who have dollars can set the price if there is nothing to counterbalance it: now that counterweight is the elTOQUE rate,” explains Nieves.

In a country that has its former economy minister on trial, and no definitive solution to the blackouts, the food crisis and other shortages, the elTOQUE team is proving a handy scapegoat for the government, which has condemned its staff as “destabilizing” agents at the service of the CIA and on the payroll of U.S. agencies.

The latest major attack against elTOQUE came a few days ago, when the authorities not only insisted that the platform was “an instrument of cognitive warfare against Cuba,” but also published files on 18 of its staff members, who are residents of the U.S., Mexico and Spain, and who they claim are orchestrating “actions against national sovereignty.” While most of the media that flourished in Cuba during the Obama era has been dismantled, with journalists and their families threatened with jail or exile, the campaign to discredit elTOQUE has escalated to unprecedented heights. The government has said the team could face “serious legal consequences” such as “being extradited if they travel to a third country.” They may also be “wanted by law enforcement bodies, or, in the event of a change of government in their country of residence”, they could be “facing extradition.” The authorities also warned that, if any of the staff members tried to travel to Cuba, they could be imprisoned.

Despite being far from Havana, the journalists are experiencing sleepless nights. “Personally, it means, above all, that a possible trip to Cuba is very dangerous,” says Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada, an elTOQUE collaborator. “These kinds of threats destroy our families. In my case, it particularly affects my mother, who is very used to this kind of anxiety. For the government to say that if you visit Cuba, you might go to jail, well that is the kind of threat made by an unscrupulous mafioso. Professionally, it doesn’t mean anything to me, because they can’t take more things from me than they have already taken; they can’t take what I have decided to forego in return for a little dignity.”

An escalating media war

The threats and complaints against elTOQUE have peaked along with the value of the dollar on the Cuban black market. In 2022, Cuba’s state-run press unleashed a defamatory campaign against Nieves’ team, which ended with the group of 24 journalists based on the island being shut down. In 2024, when the dollar was approaching 400 CUP on the black market, the government unleashed a cyber war against elTOQUE, calling them mercenaries and threatening to bring a criminal case against them. When the dollar approached the scandalous sum of 500 CUP this year, the threats were ramped up again.

In November, eight people armed with loudspeakers and banners staged a protest outside the Spain Cultural Center in Mexico, headquarters of the 14th Latam Festival organized by Distintas Latitudes, in which Nieves was participating. The Mexican citizen Iván Carreño, a Communist Party militant linked to the Mexican Movement of Solidarity with Cuba, turned on Nieves, accusing him of being an individual that was a “part of the terrorism against Cuba” disguised as an activist. On social media, the government of Havana has also been spreading hate against elTOQUE; Cubans are being told that, if their salary is not sufficient, it is because elTOQUE is penetrating the Cuban market and undermining the authority of the Central Bank over monetary policy.

The editorial team of El Toque has been transparent about the methodology used for their currency tracker, validated by several economists. It has stated that the site calculates its exchange rate using artificial intelligence to scan messages posted online in which buyers and sellers state their intended purchase or sale prices for the various currencies. They have also stressed that the rate is an “informative” calculation, which “does not determine the market,” although it obviously has an influence by setting a benchmark.

According to Nieves, the latest threats made on national television and state platforms come precisely a month before the end of 2025, with the government still not having implemented a formal foreign exchange market with a floating and non-fixed rate, which it promised last year.

“They have a month left but I don’t think they have the financial conditions to implement it,” says Nieves. “That suggests they are preparing the conditions to impose their market, but it seems they are playing dirty because, for their market to prevail, they have to have a volume of dollars to sell and sustain that advantage, thereby competing with the black market for a while, until they make it completely official. I also believe that the effort they have put into [attacking] us is designed to divert attention at a time when they are extremely vulnerable, with a multiple crisis on their hands – health, financial, energy, food – which has been exacerbated by hurricane [Melissa] in eastern Cuba.”

In the midst of this media war, one question emerges: despite the fact that elTOQUE is supposedly responsible for destabilizing the economy, why has the government not banned it on the island, as it has done with other journalistic ventures it considers a threat? Nieves believes that the authorities know that the absence of a reference in the foreign exchange market would pose an even bigger problem. “That’s because a market without a reference is a much more chaotic one, and this reference is what stops the dollar from being worth 1000 pesos. Given that there is no economy to support it, the Cuban peso can only depreciate against other currencies.”

Helpless in exile

Eloy Viera Cañive, coordinator of elTOQUE’s legal department, does not believe that Cuba’s threats will affect staff members living in exile. “The manipulation is so crude and politicized, that it does not seem to me that any authority of an efficiently institutionalized country, or an international organization such as Interpol, would pay attention to a maneuver like this,” he says. According to Viera, the “official notification of the allegations that were never formally presented to us” took the form of their faces on national television. “The question is what the sentence would be, and I think it is definitive exile,” he adds. However, Viera flags up the impotence of the elTOQUE team in the face of these allegations coming out of Havana. “There has been no official notification given to any of those [team members] being investigated and, therefore, we have been defenseless in the face of an investigative process in which we are accused of complex crimes on a national scale.”

In an investigation riddled with errors, the government has even included people who have long since ceased to contribute to the news outlet in any way. Journalist Jéssica Domínguez, who stopped working on the team at the beginning of 2025 after eight years, appears on the list compiled by Cuban security. “I am concerned for my family on the island, and for my legal status, because I am still a Cuban citizen, and technically I should have the right to enter and leave my country whenever I wanted,” she says. “We cannot afford to ignore the seriousness of the allegations, although we are not sure how far they are willing to go. It leaves you in a vulnerable position, even when you are not living on the island.”

Circulation grows with condemnation

Despite the smear campaign denounced by organizations such as the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), confidence in elTOQUE among Cubans continues to trump the fear being instilled by the authorities. “We have not seen any decrease in the use of our tool as a result of this campaign. On the contrary,” says Nieves. “In spite of everything, the dollar rate in Cuba today is still the elTOQUE rate.”

Circulation has risen from 50,000 and 60,000 daily users to more than 80,000, with 74% of visits from within Cuba. Regarding the currency tracker, elTOQUE has 127,000 users, 13,000 more since the beginning of the Cuban government’s smear campaign. They have also seen notable growth on social media and on their WhatsApp channel, where they went from 5,000 to 50,000 users in two months.

Despite everything, Nieves insists on the “deep satisfaction of having generated a solution with such direct impact on people’s lives.” And he will maintain the currency tracker until the Cuban government provides a reliable alternative. “It will exist as long as the government fails to establish an effective formal market,” he says.

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More than one million descendants of Spanish exiles or emigrants have already applied for citizenship under the Democratic Memory Law through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ consular network, while another 1.3 million have requested appointments to submit their documentation but have not yet been able to do so due to bureaucratic delays. Of the one million applications initiated, approximately half have already been processed and citizenship granted, although many are still awaiting formal registration, while rejections account for less than 2% of the total.

These are the figures handled by the General Council of Spanish Citizenship Abroad (CGCEE), an advisory body to the government representing the more than three million Spaniards residing abroad. Its president, Violeta Alonso Peláez, speaking to EL PAÍS, urged the government to provide the necessary resources to prevent this avalanche of applications from overwhelming the consular network, comprised of 178 offices, including 86 consulates general and two consulates.

The total number of those seeking to benefit from the new law, 2.3 million people, is 4.5 times the figure reached under its predecessor, the 2007 Historical Memory Law (503,439). Sources familiar with the process estimate that, at the current rate, some descendants of Spaniards will have to wait decades to see their citizenship granted, and the oldest among them could die without ever seeing it happen.

The eighth additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law granted a two-year period, extendable to three, for all those “born outside of Spain to a father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who were originally Spanish and who, as a consequence of having suffered exile for political, ideological, or religious reasons, or due to their sexual orientation and gender identity, had lost or renounced their Spanish nationality” to apply for citizenship. It also included those born abroad to Spanish mothers who lost their nationality by marrying foreigners before the Spanish Constitution came into effect, and the adult children of those whose original nationality was recognized under the 2007 law, thus filling the gaps left by the earlier legislation.

The final deadline, after the corresponding extension, ended on October 21st, which triggered a flood of applications in recent months that has exceeded all expectations and also the capacity of the Spanish consular network to process them. This has led to a more flexible interpretation of the law, so that the applications of all those who requested an appointment online to submit their documentation before the deadline, but who have been unable to do so until now due to a lack of available slots at the consulate, have been accepted.

More than 40% of the applications, around one million, come from Argentina. After that, the consulates with the next highest number of applications are Havana (Cuba) with 350,000, Mexico City with 165,000, São Paulo (Brazil) with 150,000, Miami in the U.S. with 120,000, and Caracas (Venezuela) with 40,000. This data comes from the CGCEE, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to EL PAÍS’s request for comment.

Violeta Alonso underscored the need to expedite procedures and prevent these processes from dragging on for years. Among other things, the organization she heads has proposed that the more than 7,000 civil registries in Spain collaborate in registering new Spanish citizens, that additional staff be hired, or that more routine tasks, such as document digitization and data entry, be outsourced.

Alonso laments that the enormous amount of work generated by the implementation of the Democratic Memory Law has led to delays in the provision of other services, such as the registration of children of Spanish citizens born abroad. The president of the CGCEE warns that “a redeployment of the consular network is necessary,” since new Spanish citizens, once they obtain citizenship, will require other services from consulates, such as the issuance of passports, birth, marriage, and death certificates, and so on. “It’s not just a matter of increasing staff, although that’s also important, but in many cases, more physical space is needed,” she emphasizes.

It is estimated that the number of Spaniards residing abroad will increase from over three million to almost five million.

A report by the Association of Spanish Diplomats (ADE), the largest association within the diplomatic corps, noted last year that the latest official study found 28 facilities operating at full capacity, 68 with accessibility issues at their front doors, 14 lacking fire protection systems, and at least 17 in poor condition. “Many consular offices are failing to comply with Spanish occupational health and safety regulations,” the report warned.

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At 7 a.m., when many people are driving to work or dropping off their children at school, William Botsch is already on the train, on his way from his home in Broward County to the immigration court in downtown Miami, a little more than an hour away. The commute has been part of his routine for months. After getting off at the Government Center, he walks through the noise of construction works and car horns to the glass building by the river, through the metal detectors before taking the elevator to the sixth floor.

He has not been summoned to appear in court; he is going as an observer for the pro-immigrant organization American Friends Service Committee. He has been doing this since May, when the first reports of immigrants being seized by ICE agents in immigration courts surfaced, including violent scenes and families being separated by masked officers.

In a waiting room where several grave-looking individuals are holding folders filled with papers, the hearing calendar is taped to the wall. Botsch examines it carefully, scanning lists of names and nationalities. Then he chooses, enters one of the courtrooms quietly and sits in the back row.

Over the past few months, he has witnessed how the immigration court has become a macabre machine perfectly orchestrated to trap people who have applied for asylum and attend their hearings in good faith. Their cases are dismissed at the request of government prosecutors, and as they leave the courtroom, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are waiting to arrest them in the hallway.

Botsch, 43, was born in Cayucos, a small coastal town in San Luis Obispo County, California. He moved to Florida in 2019, when his wife got a job as a public school teacher. Botsch carries out his work in the courts and in support activities for immigrants almost entirely on a voluntary basis.

His presence in court and his subsequent encounters with the families of detainees offers a unique look at a newly developed chaotic system of law enforcement that plays out behind closed doors; where judges act under pressure from the Trump administration to dismiss the cases being presented to them.

This is clearly reflected in the preliminary hearings, which are collective and fast-moving. There are about 20 people. For most, this is the first time they have appeared in a U.S. court, and many have seen arrests on the news, and know that their lives can change at any moment.

Some have red eyes from crying. Others wipe the sweat from their hands.

After giving instructions collectively, the judge begins to call each person separately, starting with those who have arrived with a lawyer, either in person or by video call. He schedules a new appointment for each one in two or three years, depending on his calendar.

The relatives present are tense as they follow the hearing. What they can’t see is that outside the courtroom, six ICE agents without uniforms or identification are waiting to pounce. One holds a tablet that he checks frequently. According to Botsch, the agents clear the area and “make everyone go back to the lobby to wait, including the families, to avoid any kind of scene.”

Inside the courtroom, a man in his fifties is asked by the judge if he needs more time to get a lawyer and is told he will be given a new appointment for February 2027. Then, a prosecutor from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sitting in front of a computer, intervenes to say that “it is not in the interest of the United States government” to continue with the case and asks that it be dismissed.

If the judge dismisses the case, the man will be arrested upon leaving the hearing. The statement baffles 50-year-old man. The judge explains that if he accepts, when he walks out the door, the government can subject him to expedited deportation. Instead, he could ask for 30 days to respond in writing.

Clutching a folder bulging with documents, the man looks at the judge, looking perplexed, and says he does not understand. Then someone in the courtroom shouts at him to take the latter option, the one that gives him 30 days.

He has been saved. Before the hearing is over, the ICE agents have left. “There’s so much subjectivity in the process that, really, it all comes down to which judge you get,” says Botsch, who has been taking notes during the hearing.

The same procedure is repeated twice more that morning, all with the same result. Since May, Botsch has documented more than 170 arrests in the Miami courthouse. His notes reflect a clear pattern: The detainees are men who come to court alone, mostly fresh from Cuba. They have applied for asylum and are now being funneled out of the justice system into expedited deportation.

Court arrests are coordinated days in advance to meet quotas, government officials told The Associated Press, with little regard for the particular details of each case. Botsch has also noticed patterns among the judges. “Some just say, ‘Okay, your case is dismissed,’ without giving any explanation,” he says. Others do an individual evaluation of the case to see if the person could receive any type of protection. Some offer a voluntary way out.

Immigration courts decide the fate of thousands of people each year and it is estimated that there is a backlog of about 3.5 million cases in the U.S. system, as well as a pronounced deficit of judges. The agency within the Department of Justice in charge of oversight is the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is not part of the Judiciary but of the Executive, and operates under the Attorney General. In recent months, the Trump administration has fired nearly 100 immigration judges who have been branded lenient.

During the arrests, “there’s a lot of commotion,” Botsch says. One day he saw a man about to be arrested who grabbed his own neck with both hands as if he wanted to strangle himself. “Some people resist or break down. The relatives are desperate. It can be very hard, very difficult to witness,” he explains.

“People understand perfectly what is happening. They know what it means to be detained, which is like being in prison. It’s horrible,” he says. “A lot of the people come from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and they’re really afraid to go back to their country. They think that something could happen to them, that they would be in danger, and the idea is devastating to them,” he adds.

Immigration detention centers in Florida have been singled out by human rights organizations for their “dehumanizing” conditions, overcrowding and lack of transparency. They have also been subject to lawsuits for a lack of due process.

Botsch warns that having a lawyer doesn’t necessarily save anyone from having their case dismissed or being arrested on leaving the hearing. The only practical difference is that an attorney can more easily file a motion for the person to appear remotely through the court’s Webex system. “If the hearing is by videocall, there is nobody physically there to arrest them,” he notes.

Around 5 p.m., as the court is about to close for the day, Botsch sees the ICE agents exit through a door leading to the garage where they load the detainees into an unmarked white minivan. If he sees the minivan, he knows there will be arrests. Seven men were arrested that day, but he does not know from which hearing. Although he has been in court all day, he can only watch one hearing at a time, he points out.

After 5 p.m., people begin to arrive at the court house to ask about their relatives. Many of these were not in court and do not know what happened; They have not heard anything for hours. Some dropped their relative off for their hearing and hoped to pick them up later, but could not find them. Others were waiting in the lobby all day and have not yet received information. Many are desperate, their faces soaked with tears.

Botsch tries to calm them down with his soft, even-tempered voice. He tells them that they have probably been arrested and shows them where to stand on the sidewalk to try to see them through the fencing around the garage as they are taken away. “That makes a huge difference: being able to physically see your family member or, in some cases, wave or kiss them when they get into the van,” he says.

Botsch goes on to explain that they will be taken to the ICE offices in Miramar, north of Miami, and that they will not be allowed to make a phone call until later that night. He gives relatives the link to the ICE locator and explains that, at some point, their family member will turn up there and they will be able to see which detention center they were sent to. He also gives them a list of pro bono attorneys and contacts for organizations that help immigrants.

Botsch doesn’t talk about the enormous emotional toll this work takes on him every day. Instead, he focuses on the migrants. He says he’s noticed that even “those in charge of carrying this out are under a lot of stress.… It’s like everybody knows what they’re doing in court is wrong,” he says. “I’m sure even ICE prosecutors and judges experience some kind of conflict.”

Neither the DHS nor the EOIR responded to a request for comment.

The Miramar Protection Circle

On Wednesdays, Botsch does not go to court, but meets instead with the Miramar Protection Circle, a group of volunteers from various religious and pro-immigrant organizations that has met outside the ICE office in that city about 18 miles (30km) north of Miami since 2017.

They place a table, folding chairs and posters with pro-immigration messages on the sidewalk, and offer relatives of those arrested free coffee, water and pastries. An imposing figure among the volunteers, Botsch serves coffee to a woman who has been waiting for news of a family member for several hours. Meanwhile, members of the Circle watch as dozens of people wait to enter the office across the street. Most come to report for an annual routine checkup, but in recent months, many have been arrested, volunteers say.

In recent weeks, they have noticed an increase in arrests. They say that some are being summoned on weekends, and when they show up, they are arrested. The Circle members are concerned that they are being held there for several days, in a facility that was not designed as a long-term detention center – minimum conditions, such as toilets and beds, are not met.

Next to the volunteers, relatives stand anxiously, staring at the door and the parking lot, trying to see their loved ones. Suddenly, a woman breaks down in tears: her partner has just called to say that he has been arrested. Some try to console her, and others purse their lips wondering if they will suffer the same fate. This happens almost every day now. And volunteers like Botsch can only watch in silence.

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