HAVANA, CUBA – The issuance of a State Department visa to Cuban official Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and niece of his brother, Fidel, has been met by a firestorm of protest from LGBT Cuban-Americans, who condemned the Cuban regime’s record of human rights violations.

Herb Sosa, the executive director of the Unity Coalition, told reporters, “For Mariela Castro, or anybody else under the Castro dictatorship, to say they are representing the rights of anyone is an insult to the hundreds of thousands who have either been killed, jailed or assassinated by their own hands, or the nearly 100,000 people who’ve jumped into the ocean looking for freedom who haven’t made it here.” On Tuesday, Castro, the director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education, told an audience of about 130 in New York that her support for LGBT rights in Cuba “is a pretext to fight other forms of discrimination.”

The visit by Castro—who was issued visas in 2001 and 2002 by the Bush Administration—was denounced by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who chairs the Democratic National Committee, and Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL).

“Allowing Raul’s daughter to come to the U.S. when the regime still holds Alan Gross makes no sense,” Nelson said, referring to the American social worker arrested in 2009 by Cuban authorities for providing satellite phones and computers to Cuban Jews, in violation of the island nation’s laws. Gross is currently serving a 15-year sentence in a Cuban prison.