Washington (AP) — President Joe Biden tells State Department Monday that Cuban-Americans will consider U.S. remittance policies to ensure that the money they send home is directly in the hands of their families without losing power. Ordered to create a working group to do.

He also ordered a review of the feasibility of increasing staff at the US Embassy in Havana. The White House hopes that staffing will help further promote civil society involvement, following one of the largest anti-government demonstrations on the Communist island in recent memory.

The action was detailed by a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity, as the Biden administration has not yet publicly announced its efforts.

Over a week after thousands of Cubans travel to the streets of Havana and other cities across the island to protest food shortages and high prices during the coronavirus crisis. This is a level of frustration that has not been seen in Cuba for over 60 years.

Biden also wants the government to work with Congress to identify options for making the Internet more accessible on the island. The administration has moved to immediately block Internet access to stop the images of the protest from being broadcast to the world.

The government is also considering working with international organizations to strengthen humanitarian aid, and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned Cuban officials for human rights abuses against peaceful Cuban protesters. Officials said they would investigate.

Biden, who has been pressured to take action in parliament, called Cuba “oppressing citizens” and “failed states” last week.

But Biden also suggested that taking effective action is complex.

“There’s a lot to consider what we do to help the Cuban people, but that would require another situation or a guarantee that they wouldn’t be used by the government,” Biden said. “For example, the ability to send remittances back to the cube. We don’t do that now because of the fact that the administration is very likely to confiscate those remittances or their large chunks.”

The dramatic reduction of embassy staff from Cuba began in 2017, regardless of the Trump administration’s opposition to President Barack Obama’s reconciliation with the island.

Instead, the dismissal of staff from the U.S. Embassy in Havana took place in the spring and summer of the year in response to unexplained brain damage suffered by U.S. diplomats, spies, and other civil servants dispatched to the island. started.

The Trump administration has also reversed many of the Obama administration’s initiatives and re-imposed restrictions that banned US airlines from direct commercial flights to multiple Cuban airports and calls by US registered cruise ships.

Trump also significantly reduced the remittances that Cuban Americans were allowed to send to relatives on the island, banned financial and commercial transactions with most Cuban companies in government or the military, and his last term. And part of the “redesignation of Cuba as a” national sponsor of terrorism “” is in support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.