Cuba’s government confirmed earlier this week that it was communicating with U.S. officials following the shooting of the American boat. Rubio has said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Coast Guard are investigating what happened.

An executive order that Trump signed in late January pledged to impose tariffs on countries providing oil to Cuba, threatening to further cripple a country already plagued by a deepening energy crisis, though U.S. authorities have since indicated that oil from Venezuela can be sold to Cuban interests in some cases.

Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, posted, then later deleted on Friday, that “the US maintains its fuel embargo against Cuba in full force, and its impact as a form of collective punishment is unwavering.”

“Nothing announced in recent days changes this reality,” he wrote on X before the post was removed. “The possibility of conditional sales to the private sector already existed and does not alleviate the impact on the Cuban population.”

Meanwhile, 40-plus U.S. civil society organizations sent a letter to Congress on Friday asking that it “press the Trump administration to reverse its aggressive policy towards Cuba” and saying that efforts to cut oil shipments to the Caribbean island would spark a humanitarian collapse.

Signees included the Alliance of Baptists, ActionAid USA and the Presbyterian Church.

“Policies that deliberately impose hunger and mass hardship on millions of civilians constitute a form of collective punishment, and as such are a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” the letter reads.