WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is cracking down on Americans who have violated the embargo against Cuba, targeting a “solidarity” trip to Havana in July 2005 by the New York-based pro-Castro group Pastors for Peace.

The Treasury Department sent administrative subpoenas to more than 100 people who traveled to Cuba last summer with the activist group – a first-step enforcement action that could lead to up to $65,000 in fines being imposed on each traveler.

The founder and executive director of Pastors for Peace and its parent organization, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, the Reverend Lucius Walker, told The New York Sun yesterday that the subpoenas were sent to most of the people who went on the “caravan,” as the annual missions to Cuba are called – a number Rev. Walker placed at more than 100. The letters from the Treasury, Rev. Walker said, consisted of a “wide-ranging” list of questions about the nature of caravan participants’ travel to and transactions in Cuba, which are prohibited under the terms of America’s embargo against the Castro dictatorship.

The enforcement of the embargo, Rev. Walker said, is “despicable,” adding that he is “morally outraged.” Rev. Walker, IFCO, and Pastors for Peace traditionally have been supportive of the Castro dictatorship and highly critical of the American government. In 2000, Rev. Walker organized and accompanied trips by members of the Congressional Black Caucus to Havana to visit with officials of the Cuban regime. Also in 2000, IFCO helped organize a “welcoming event” for the Cuban dictator when he visited New York for the United Nations’ Millennium Summit.

Rev. Walker has also traveled to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with another vocal critic of the American government, former attorney general Ramsey Clark, and has been on the steering committee of an anti-war group sharply critical of America and Israel, International ANSWER.

While Pastors for Peace has received warnings about its Cuba travel from the federal government in the past, and has had materials destined for the Castro dictatorship confiscated by U.S. Customs officials en route to Cuba, the subpoenas marked the first instance of the government’s enforcement of the embargo against individual caravan travelers, Rev. Walker said.

The Treasury Department declined to comment on specifics of the Pastors for Peace subpoenas, citing Department policy prohibiting the disclosure of enforcement actions. But a spokeswoman for the Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees enforcement of the embargo, Molly Millerwise, told the Sun: “Every U.S. person has a responsibility to abide by U.S. law. No one is above the law, and any U.S. person violating the sanctions, including traveling illegally, does face penalties.”

According to Treasury Department policy, the subpoenas are a first measure that can lead to investigations, hearings, witness examinations, and the seizure of documents and evidence related to travel or transactions with Cuba. Under provisions of the Trading With the Enemy Act, which applies to violations of the Cuba embargo, the enforcement measures could lead to civil penalties ranging from a warning letter to as much as $65,000 in fines, if OFAC finds evidence of illegal travel on the part of Pastors for Peace.

In press releases about last summer’s caravan, Pastors for Peace described the trip as a “challenge” to “the immoral and illegal U.S. blockade and travel restrictions against Cuba,” announcing that they would be “traveling on to Cuba without U.S. treasury department licenses.”

News that the Treasury Department is enforcing the law against American transactions with the Castro dictator ship was cheered by supporters of Cuban democracy yesterday. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, said: “I’m pleased that the Bush administration will be enforcing our nation’s laws regarding the embargo. It is important to send a message to those who actively plan to break our laws that the response from the U.S. officials will be robust and swift.”

“Some groups,” Ms. Ros-Lehtinen added, “thumb their nose at our clear laws, and then express their bewilderment when enforcement takes place. Pastors for Peace are merely making a political point, while using the anguish of the Cuban people as a shield.”

Rev. Walker said yesterday that he was bewildered by the administration’s actions, saying he thought the enforcement was an attempt by President Bush to help re-elect his brother, Jeb Bush, as governor of Florida by appealing to “extreme right-wing Cubans.”

The subpoenas, Rev. Walker said, were evidence of the Bush administration’s “baring its knuckles,” adding: “It’s a misuse of government time and money to harass people traveling to a country that is in no way a threat to the U.S.”

Mr. Castro’s dictatorship is one of six countries identified by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Rev. Walker, however, said that “if there’s a list of terrorist states, the U.S. should be on the top of that list,” lambasting America’s Cuba policy as “mean-spirited.” Mr. Castro’s Communist Cuba, Rev. Walker added, “is a good example,” because “If all the countries of the Third World were to adopt policies and programs similar to Cuba’s, this world would be a better place.”

According to Rev. Walker, caravan participants who received subpoenas had replied to them, and were awaiting news of further enforcement actions. “The next move is theirs,” he said of the Treasury Department. “But what people are telling me that they’re not going to pay the fines, they’ll go to jail, they’ll continue to be in solidarity with Cuba.”

Cuba’s government-controlled newspaper, Granma, first reported the Bush administration’s enforcement actions earlier this week. The account erroneously claimed that the Treasury Department had imposed $1.5 million in fines on Pastors for Peace.