A prominent LGBTQ activist who lives in the U.K. said she could not travel to D.C. for the WorldPride 2025 Human Rights Conference because the U.S. revoked her eligibility to enter the country without a visa.

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, the co-founder of UK Black Pride known as Lady Phyll, was supposed to speak at the conference’s opening plenary at the National Theater. Opoku-Gyimah instead spoke remotely.

She said the U.S. “revoked” her eligibility to participate in the Visa Waiver Program and use an Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, to enter the country without a visa because she traveled to Cuba earlier this year.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection website notes the State Department on Jan. 12, 2021, designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

President Donald Trump’s first administration ended eight days after he made the designation. Then-President Joe Biden in the final days of his administration said the U.S. would move to lift the designation as part of a Vatican-brokered deal that secured the release of prisoners on the Communist island. Brenda Díaz, a transgender woman with HIV who participated in an anti-government protest in 2021, is among those who the Cuban government released from prison.

The CBP website notes that with “limited exceptions, a traveler who is found to have visited Cuba on or after this date is not eligible for travel under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) using an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) and must apply for a visa to travel to the United States.”

“Additionally, a traveler who at the time of application for an ESTA holds dual nationality with both a VWP country and Cuba is not eligible for travel under the VWP using an ESTA and must apply for a visa to travel to the United States,” it reads. “If an ESTA has already been approved and it is later determined that the traveler has been present in Cuba or holds dual nationality with both a VWP country and Cuba, the ESTA will be revoked.”

“Ineligibility for an ESTA is not a bar to travel to the United States,” notes the CBP website. “Individuals who are not eligible to travel under the VWP may apply for a visa at any U.S. embassy or consulate.”

Opoku-Gyimah said she learned of the revocation “as I preparing to be with you.” Opoku-Gyimah in her remarks said she applied for a visa that would have allowed her to enter the U.S., but the first available appointment was not until later this year.

“Yet from afar, I’m here,” she said. “We don’t abandon our people.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, has yet to respond to the Washington Blade’s request for comment.