More than 5 million migrants have entered the United States illegally by crossing its southern border in the last two years.
Those who leave from regions without land connections, from the Caribbean to Asian or African countrieshave found in Nicaragua their platform to reach the North American power.
In doing so, they avoid crossing the dreaded Darien Gap, the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama, and only three countries – Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico – separate them from their dream of stepping foot on U.S. soil.
You can access Nicaragua by plane, since President Daniel Ortega’s government exempts visas the main nationalities that emigrate to the United States.
Ortega, who governs the country autocratically with his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo, obtains a double benefit from this: It puts political pressure on Washington and, above all, brings in large amounts of cash.
Unusual flights
On June 4, 2024, a Boeing 777-200 from Kazakhstan with a stopover in Libya landed at the Augusto C. Sandino airport in Managua.
Operated by the small Libyan airline Ghadames Air, the flight did not appear in the records of the Nicaraguan National and International Airports Administration Company (EAAI) and could only be tracked on specialized air traffic portals.
Was Ghadames Air’s third in less than a month and left in the capital more of 300 passengers, most of them Indian nationalsrevealed The Nicaraguan investigative media 100% Noticias.
Ghadames’ three flights to Nicaragua could have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for an unusual event that set off alarm bells at the end of last year.
On December 23, 2023, a plane from Dubai bound for Managua was intercepted during a stopover in Vatry (France) following an anonymous complaint about human trafficking.
It was carrying 303 Indian passengers. who were allegedly trying to reach the American continent through Nicaragua in order to travel to the United States. In the end, 276 were returned to their country and 27 requested asylum in France.
To date, it is the only plane carrying migrants that is known to have failed to reach Managua.
From May 2022 to May 2023 they landed in the Nicaraguan capital “about 1,200 privately contracted flights to transport passengers who were directly en route to the southern border with the United States,” Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development program of the Mexican government, told BBC Mundo. think tank Inter-American Dialogue.
Orozco estimates that more than 300,000 people illegally entered the United States via Nicaragua in 2023 and so far in 2024, “almost 10% of all migration that has arrived at the southern border.”
The change of strategy
Although flights from far away places in Asia or Africa attract more attention, the truth is that Most of the migrants who have used Nicaragua as a first stop on the way to the United States came from closer countries such as Cuba, Haiti or, to a lesser extent, the Dominican Republic.
In the case of Cuba, since the Ortega government granted free entry to its citizens in 2021, Nicaragua has become the main transit route to the United States for the largest exodus in the history of the island (more than half a million Cubans have left by different means in the last two and a half years).
In response, the US government imposed a series of sanctions starting in November 2023, when it blacklisted airline executives involved in this business.
“It is part of our comprehensive approach to address irregular migration and target owners, executives and senior officials of companies that provide transportation by land, sea or air with charter flights specifically people trying to migrate irregularly to the United States,” a spokesman for the US State Department told BBC Mundo.
Haiti, for its part, banned all charter flights to Nicaragua last October.
Added to all this is the visa program of the United States government, which since the beginning of last year has established quotas for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to migrate legally.
So, last year flights were drastically reduced to Nicaragua loaded with migrants from Caribbean countries, so the Ortega government decided to broaden its horizons.
“The political and mercantilist opportunism of Nicaraguan authorities and private companies opened the door to continue bringing people through other routes,” says Manuel Orozco.
At the end of last year Nicaragua expanded its visa-free policy and signed agreements with small airlinessuch as Ghadames Air, to attract migrants of the most diverse nationalities, from Indians to Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz or Moroccans.
“Between December 2023 and May 2024, there will be More than 30 charter flights Of these, 15 come from various parts outside the continent: Morocco (2), Libya (3), Curaçao (at least 10 from Amsterdam), Germany (Kirchberg) and France (Chalons). The latest warning from the United States government is in response to the Ghadames Airlines flight from Libya,” according to Orozco.
Arturo McFields, exiled journalist and former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), highlights that “Ortega has not only promoted the flights, but has opened embassies in some of the issuing countries (African and former Soviet republics) to ensure better coordination of these flights.”
The Nicaraguan government has so far remained silent on the matter and did not respond to BBC Mundo’s request for comment for this article.
Income for Ortega
Beyond serving as a transit country for migrants, the Nicaraguan government operates, according to analysts, a wide and lucrative network around this activity.
“Trade intermediaries organize a complete package, which they put together in cooperation with the Nicaraguan government,” says Manuel Orozco.
The Ortega government, according to the expert, “facilitates flight procedures, visa processing, and in some cases, transportation and stay in Managua, from the airport to the border with Honduras.”
With this, it obtains income from at least three sources: Airport usage taxes, visa fees, and transportation and accommodation expenses.
“And for those who pass through Nicaragua by land after crossing the border with Costa Rica, an undetermined number of them are charged a US$150 pass to enter the country without a visa,” he added.
It is unknown how much money this activity has brought to Managua in recent years or where it ends up.
According to the Nicaraguan media Confidencial, between January and October 2023 the government would have received about US$65.9 million in fees and fines alone to migrants in transit, while in the first 3 months of 2024 the figure would reach US$8.4 million.
However, the benefits to the Nicaraguan government are believed to be much greater.
A one-way ticket from Cuba to Nicaragua in the last two years was around US$3,000and each migrant usually pays between US$10,000 and US$15,000 for the complete route from the place of origin to the border between Mexico and the United States.
Part of these amounts paid to intermediaries or agencies by the hundreds of thousands of users of the Managua route would have ended up in the hands of the Ortega government and its associates.
Political motivations
In addition to monetary gains, analysts say the Nicaraguan government gains political gains from this activity.
“It must be remembered that the regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have used the migration issue to pressure the United States and thus obtain some kind of benefit,” says McFields.
He believes that by controlling this important entry valve for illegal migrants, Ortega has an ace up his sleeve for future negotiations on bilateral issues with Washington.
And furthermore, the journalist affirms, Nicaragua plays the role of a “useful pawn for the interests of countries that are trying to have some kind of negative impact on the migration issue, which is one of the three main issues on the United States electoral agenda” just a few months before the November presidential elections that will most likely pit Joe Biden against Donald Trump.
In any case, Nicaragua’s strategy is a real headache for the Biden administration, which considers it a threat to your security.
Manuel Orozco believes that the threat is twofold.
On the one hand, the number of undocumented immigrants arriving at the southern border is increasing considerably, overwhelming the authorities’ resources to control entry and assist migrants.
“And the other effect on security is the risk of people arriving from Nicaragua with criminal or terrorist intentionswhose history or trajectory is unknown,” he notes.
BBC Mundo asked the State Department spokesperson if the US and Nicaraguan governments have maintained any kind of communication to try to resolve this matter.
“The Nicaraguan authorities are well aware of our concerns,” the spokesman said.
“They know that our government and those across the region are working together to reduce irregular migration and promote the safety and well-being of migrants, but they have decided not to do so”, he said.
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