Marco Rubio’s Powerful Secret Backers

Marco Rubio, as everyone knows, is now the U.S. Secretary of State. Among his first acts was attempting to deport a legal permanent resident of the United States who had committed no crime. The detention occurred during a covert action that more resembled a kidnapping than a legal arrest, as men in plainclothes without identification ignored the frantic pleas of the victim’s wife, as she pleaded to know the name of the agency and where and why her husband was being handcuffed and taken away.

Within hours, Mahmoud Khalil, whose only offense had been the exercise of his free speech rights protected under the U.S. Constitution, had been disappeared to a detention site in Louisiana, far from his New York home.

Rubio personally signed off on the arrest of Khalil, misusing his authority as secretary of state. The authority, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), reads: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

It’s a cynical use of power as there were no “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” and everyone knows that Khalil, who has a green card and is married to a U.S. citizen, was targeted as a supporter of Palestine.

Who is Marco Rubio?

First, he’s not a “refugee from Castro’s Cuba” and neither is any member of his family. He was born in the United States 15 years after his parents emigrated from Cuba, in 1956, before the triumph of the Revolution. There’s no question of “fleeing communism.” As it happens, his family fled, if they fled from anything, from savage capitalism and neocolonial underdevelopment.

They fled from the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who killed and disappeared more than 20,000 students, and mostly young workers, farmworkers and intellectuals, during his time in power from March 1952 to December 31, 1958.

The family of Rubio fled from Cuba where U.S. companies owned about 40% of Cuban sugar plantations, almost all the cattle ranches, about 90% of the mines and mineral concessions, 80% of the public utility companies and almost all the petroleum industry.

Because of this U.S. dominance, the average life expectancy was 58 years, infant mortality was 42 for each thousand live births, 44% of the population was illiterate, 92% of the rural population had no access to any source of electricity and 36% of the rural population had intestinal parasites and 31% had suffered from malaria.

The Fanjuls—The Most Powerful Right-Wing Family You’ve Never Heard Of

Rubio is in the deep pockets of the Fanjul family, who are the most politically powerful family in Florida due to their wealth—estimated to be more than $8 billion—and their political influence bought with just a fraction of those dollars.

The Fanjuls were rich and powerful aristocrats in Cuba, until the Cuban Revolution, when the family’s properties, including cane fields, mills, workers’ barracks, mansions and a port, became public property: “From this day on, all this belongs to the people. All of it!”

Not quite all, of course, as the Fanjuls went to Florida with enough cash in hand to rebuild their lifestyle, starting with the purchase of the 4,000-acre Osceola Sugar Mill.

Today, Fanjul Corporation is the largest sugar producer in the world, with five sugar mills, 10 sugar refineries, five power plants, one rice mill, one alcohol plant and two furfural (furfural is an agricultural byproduct organic chemical, carcinogenic in lab animals) plants, 375,000 acres of farmland and 50,000 head of cattle.

The company has also expanded into real estate, including a resort, an airport and a deepwater port in the Dominican Republic. Their operations, both in Florida and in the Dominican Republic, use Haitian and Jamaican workers in conditions harking back to the slavery conditions under which they built their Cuban empire.

By the way, in November 2022, a subsidiary owned by the Fanjul brothers in the Dominican Republic, Central Roma, was banned from importing sugar after the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) found evidence of “the use of forced labor in its operations.” In its investigation of Central Roma, the CBP found indications that the company engages in “abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime.”

The Fanjuls have become experts at the U.S. political system. They get money from the government in the form of sugar price support. They then use that money to promote politicians who will support their terrible economic and environmental policies and help them get ever richer. They contribute money to both Democrats and Republicans, but far more to Republicans.

Rubio is their boy. “The Fanjuls believed in me early on, when few others did, and I’m grateful for that,” Rubio said. The Fanjuls and their company have supported Rubio since his first election to the Florida House in 2000 and have continued to back him.

In addition to the $504,000 the Fanjuls and their company have directly given to support Rubio and get him elected, they have organized dozens of fundraisers—one cost $42,500 per ticket. When Rubio ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, they supported him with cash, fundraisers and influence—they even introduced him to Rudy Giuliani.

Rubio Does What the Fanjuls Want

Rubio is a staunch supporter of sugar price supports, which artificially inflate sugar prices, but enrich his sponsors.

The U.S. Sugar Program is the federal commodity program that sets a minimum price for sugar, makes nonrecourse loans (loans for which the borrower is not personally liable) available to sugar producers and restricts sugar imports.

This program raises the prices for consumers in the United States, so that about $1.4 billion of excess profit goes to the sugar producers—the Fanjuls are the largest of these, by far. The subsidy program has to be approved every five years by Congress. To make sure it is approved, the Fanjuls contribute to the election of Congress members and officials in Florida and throughout the country.

Rubio is also a firm opponent of environmental regulations that might affect the business of his bosses. Runoff into the Everglades and pollution into Lake Okeechobee, essentially all from corporate polluter sugar farms, is not a problem for Rubio. He also doesn’t believe in climate change. In 2021, Rubio voted against a bipartisan infrastructure bill providing $47 billion to prepare communities for extreme weather, fires and floods.

In October 2024, Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit Florida. Six million people in Florida were ordered to evacuate and 32 people were killed. Rubio has dismissed allegations the Fanjuls influence his environmental positions.

He does not really expect anyone to believe that as efforts to impose enforceable limits on phosphorus pollution in the Everglades are opposed by the Fanjul family sugar baron interests, the fact that Rubio also opposes these efforts while the Fanjuls are pouring money into his political campaigns is just coincidence.

And, of course, Rubio, who has never been closer than 90 miles to Cuba, is a Cuba-hater, just as his promoters and backers, the Fanjuls, are.

How the Fanjuls Operate

The Fanjuls use money obtained from U.S. consumers via sugar subsidies and import restrictions to pay off politicians to make decisions in their favor.

MAGA Inc. got one million dollars, whereas Rep. Jim Costa (D–Fresno) got only $1,000.

The Fanjuls contributed one million dollars to Make America Great Again (Inc.) in the 2024 election cycle. Here are some more Fanjul contributions from the same period:

• Republican National Committee $413,000
• Project Rescue America $250,000
• House Majority PAC $100,000 (D)
• Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee $82,600
• National Republican Senatorial Committee $79,200
• Democratic Executive Committee of Florida $40,000
• National Republican Congressional Committee $32,800
• Friends of Jimmy Patronis $26,400
• Rep. Lois Frankel (D–Fla.) $26,400
• U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R–Fla.) $20,599
• Rhode Island Republican State Central Committee $20,000
• Rep. Daniel Webster (R–Fla.) $18,200
• Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R–Fla.) $16,100
• Michigan Democratic State Central Committee $16,000
• Rep. Laurel Lee (R–Fla.) $13,200
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D–Fla.) $13,200
• Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D–Fla.) $13,200
• Donald Trump $10,134
• Republican Party of Illinois $10,000
• Republican Campaign Committee of New Mexico $10,000
• Republican Party of Connecticut $10,000
• Colorado Republican Committee $10,000
• Republican Party of South Carolina $10,000
• Republican Party of Massachusetts $10,000

These $10,000 contributions to Republican parties and central committees of various states go on for pages—more than 20 contributions. Then there is a series of contributions ranging from $1,000 to $8,000—the list goes on for an additional six pages. Jim Costa got $1,000, just so you know. So did Nancy Pelosi.

Forty-three of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives got money from the Fanjuls. Seventeen of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate did as well. The Fanjuls spent two-thirds of their cash on Republicans and about 30% on Democrats.

In addition, their total lobbying expenses for 2024 were $1,130,000 (per Open Secrets).

Rubio’s Campaign Finances

Now let’s look at Rubio’s own campaign finances.

We’re going to skip the petty graft from a few years ago when Rubio’s campaign was fined for improper contributions and he was in trouble for funding his personal lifestyle with campaign contributions. That’s illegal but small-time.

In addition to what is listed below, it is important to note that there is an enormous amount of dark money funneled through ostensibly 501(c)(4) organizations “devoted to social welfare purposes” that are really political PACs.

From 2019 to 2024, Rubio raised $50,277,154 and spent $49,371,987. Top contributors were the Pro-Israel America PAC $109,800; The Villages $78,405; the Republican Jewish Coalition $77,736; the National Republican Senatorial Committee $51,200; and The GEO Group $48,800 (see sidebar). 

Rubio was also the fourth-largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his Congressional career.

What about that dark money funneled through fake 501(c)(4) organizations?

The Conservative Solutions Project also contributes large sums to Marco Rubio, which, as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare nonprofit” it does not have to disclose.

The Conservative Solutions Project was established solely to further the common good and general welfare of Rubio. It’s run by the man who advised Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign. It collected more than $16 million in 2016 and probably gave it to Rubio, but we don’t have the right to know.

In 2012, a proposed reform law that would have required the disclosure of secret donors was defeated in the Senate, with Republicans, including Rubio, voting no. He again voted to conceal campaign contributions in 2022, voting against the Disclose Act and the Freedom to Vote Act in the Senate.

“This campaign activity by a social welfare organization violates the statutory requirement that a section 501(c)(4) organization be devoted ‘exclusively’ to social welfare purposes—which do not include intervention in campaigns—and also violates the requirement that a social welfare group serve general community purposes, and not provide a private benefit to any individual or political group,” reads a November letter to the Justice Department from the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21. Nothing was done about the problem, of course.

Oh, and the Fanjuls? 

Trump took over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, getting rid of the previous board of directors and appointing a new board that obligingly made Trump the director, although he has never attended a performance there in his life. Among the new board is Vice President JD Vance’s wife and Emilia May Fanjul, who is married to Jose “Pepe” Fanjul, who gave $814,600 to the Trump 47 fundraising committee.

And the Fanjuls’ sugar operation?

A class-action suit was filed on March 5 accusing Florida Crystals, one of the United States’ biggest sugar firms, and its parent company, Fanjul Corporation, of deceiving consumers and endangering public health by continuing to use environmentally harmful pre-harvest burning, while marketing their products as environmentally friendly.

“Consumers are being deceived,” says the suit, and a lawyer representing the plaintiffs states that “this is a clearcut case of greenwashing.”

According to the suit, the sugar company’s leaf-burning practices “emit substantial volumes of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change as well as toxic particulate matter (PM2.5), dioxins, carbon monoxide, ammonia, elemental carbon and volatile organic compounds that fill the air of the Florida Glades region on a daily basis during the six-to-eight-month harvesting season, poisoning local residents, who are disproportionately poor and people of color.”

To remove excess leaves before harvesting, sugarcane growers have two options: slashing, also known as green harvesting—which is cleaner but requires investment in machinery—or burning, which is cheaper on the front end but causes harm to the environment and public health.

The Fanjuls, consistent always to the cause of advancing themselves regardless of the harm to others, choose burning.

Again, it bears repeating, in 2024 Fanjul Corporation spent almost $3 million on federal election campaign donations, the vast majority to Republican causes, as well as another $900,000 on lobbying.

Moreover, the top recipient of Fanjul largesse serving today—with more than $280,000 across his Senate career—is Rubio.