The United States government announced on Wednesday a series of “coordinated actions” against the administration of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua, including visa restrictions, sanctions on companies and policy alerts to airlines, in order to “ take strong measures against irregular migration.”
Senior US officials detailed that this is a response to the actions of the Nicaraguan government that “continues to participate in the repressive campaign that silences civil society and unjustly detained people who are exercising their fundamental freedoms.”
As announced, the shares are divided into three different sectors. On the one hand, the Treasury Department and the Department of Homeland Security issued a policy alert to inform the aviation industry about the ways in which smugglers are “facilitating irregular migration.”
This policy alert is a notification sent to airlines with five points where they can collaborate to reduce irregular traffic. Among them, identifying flight segments that are known to be irregular migrant routes, providing passenger information and reviewing the documents provided by them.
The notice does not include specific enforcement actions or consequences for airlines that do not cooperate with the efforts. However, at the end of February, the US expanded its visa restriction policy to owners and officials of charter flight, land and maritime transportation companies that offer services for people seeking to migrate irregularly to the country.
The new policy alert joins, according to officials, the statement from the International Air Transport Association issued last week, which warned airlines to “take action” to minimize the risk of being complicit in irregular migration.
“The regime is also responsible for taking advantage of desperate and vulnerable migrants,” said one of the officials, who assured that the Nicaraguan government “sells visas” to migrants upon entering the country for 96 hours.
This action, according to the official, “facilitates” and “opens the way” for irregular migrants to continue their route to the southwest border of the United States.
Visa restrictions
On the other hand, the State Department imposed visa restrictions to 250 people associated with the Nicaraguan government and non-governmental actors who “support Ortega-Murillo’s attacks on human rights.” Among those sanctioned are members of the police, paramilitary personnel, prison officers, judges and public education workers.
Additionally, the Treasury Department designated three entities based in Nicaragua to “hold the Ortega-Murillo government accountable for its repression of Nicaraguans and for profiting from irregular migration.”
The first entity sanctioned is a Russian military training center that functions as a police academy for “anti-narcotics” purposes and which was approved in 2018. According to the US government, this center “allowed” the Ortega government to carry out “anti-democratic” activities.
The government of Daniel Ortega recognized in an event marking the 44th anniversary of the Police in 2023, that the Russian training center installed in Nicaragua supported the dismantling of the demonstrations in 2018, which were classified as “an attempted coup d’état.” .
“They have chosen to ally themselves with the authoritarian government of Russia and follow its example of repression,” said one of the officials.
The other two entities sanctioned were the Compañía Minera Internacional, known as COMINTSA and Capital Mining Investment Nicaragua. Through this action, all US companies are prohibited from transacting with these entities, which officials say, “effectively separates them from the United States and much of the international financial system.”
In June 2022, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned to the Nicaraguan state company Eniminas, as well as its president, Ruy López Delgado, in response to the decision of President Daniel Ortega’s administration to “deepen its relationship with Russia while waging war with Ukraine.”
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