Razones de Cuba Refutes Nick Shirley April 30 Claim
nick shirley said Cuban agents followed him from Havana’s airport on April 30, confiscated his recording equipment and cornered him in his hotel lobby that night. Razones de Cuba, a State Security-linked platform, answered with a public rebuttal that rejected his account and said he had entered Cuba on a tourist visa.
Shirley said, “Right now we have Cuban intelligence in the hotel lobby, working to essentially trap us and potentially imprison us or prevent us from leaving Cuba.” He left Cuba on May 1 after posting the video from Havana.
Razones de Cuba’s rebuttal
Razones de Cuba called Shirley’s account “pure anti-communist script” and said he had conducted recordings and interviews without authorization. The platform also said Shirley was summoned for a routine immigration interview and voluntarily changed his flight to leave early.
The rebuttal landed in a climate where Cuba is already under scrutiny over press conditions. The facts supplied here say Cuba ranks 160 out of 180 countries in the 2026 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, with 69 arbitrary detentions of journalists recorded in January 2026, a 430% increase from the same month the previous year.
Roberto J. González shares the video
The clip traveled beyond Shirley’s own audience after Miami-Dade County Commissioner Roberto J. González shared it on May 1 and described it as “real journalism.” The same video was later featured on TMZ Live, giving the dispute a wider U.S. platform within a day of Shirley’s departure from Cuba.
Cuba’s wider response
Razones de Cuba paired its rebuttal with a broader defense of Cuba’s political climate, writing, “While he was concocting conspiracies in a hotel with 24/7 electricity, over 600,000 Cubans marched on May Day for peace and delivered more than 6 million signatures against the blockade.” The same background facts say Cuba currently holds 775 political prisoners, including 338 sentenced due to the protests of July 11th, 2021.
Shirley’s claim and Razones de Cuba’s response now stand as competing accounts of the same April 30 visit. The next confirmed step in the dispute is not a court filing or a formal hearing, but whichever side chooses to release more footage or records from the hotel, airport, or immigration interview that each side has already described.
