Every day more Nicaraguans are forced to flee the country because of the political persecution, repression and harassment that the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has established in Nicaragua, as stated by a human rights organization. Currently, citizens are migrating en masse to the United States and Costa Rica in search of protection.
In the framework of World Refugee Day, Enrique Cuadra21, a leader of the Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN), told Article 66 that deciding to leave Nicaragua and start a new life in the United States to protect his life has “been one of the most difficult decisions that I have had to make as a young man.”
The student leader was forced to leave his country by fear and the threat of being imprisoned again. On February 4, 2021, a strong riot squad arrived at the opponent’s house. They destroyed his room and without saying a word they took him into custody. The next day they released him and the Ortega police threatened him that he would stop “fucking” or they would arrest him again.
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«I try every day that exile is an opportunity to continue working for the restitution of rights, for freedom, justice and democracy. I have the firm conviction that the resistance of the people is the hope of returning to Nicaragua for all the exiles, meanwhile I will continue working occupying the spaces that are necessary to continue demanding freedom for all political prisoners and freedom for Nicaragua,” said Enrique Cuadra , who is a political asylum seeker in the US.
Elton Riveraa Nicaraguan activist and one of the hundreds of students expelled from the country’s state universities by Daniel Ortega’s regime, told the research team Article 66 that the decision to leave Nicaragua was made “overnight, so I arrived in Costa Rica without any plan beyond being safe.”
“For me, being in exile as a refugee applicant has meant a forced restart of my way of life, I had to leave everything behind and start living a new experience with nothing but uncertainty,” said the 28-year-old, originally from Matagalpa.
In addition, he pointed out that “although the law and human rights allow you to live integrated in a country that receives us as refugees, the system and society are different in practice, refugee applicants are not part of the country that receives us. , in my case Costa Rica, we are only people with permission to live and work here, but access to services such as health and education is very limited for young people like me».
Massive migration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica and the United States
According to the Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Arnoldo André Tinoco, since the social protests of April 2018 to date, requests for refuge in the southern country have increased by more than 130,000 and around 500 Nicaraguans who enter Costa Rica are served daily. looking for security.
The General Directorate of Migration and Immigration of Costa Rica revealed to Confidential that, from the social outbreak in Nicaragua from 2018 to March 2022, they have recorded 137,289 refugee requests from Nicaraguans.
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According to data from the Costa Rican authorities, in the first quarter of this year it received 20,257 requests from Nicaraguans, five times more than those registered in the first quarter of 2021 (4,004).
Likewise, there is currently a wave of Nicaraguan migrants heading north in search of the so-called American dream. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP, for its acronym in English), records that between January and May 2022 it detained a total of 72,711 Nicaraguans at its borders; and if compared to the months of January to May 2021 (10,884 arrests), the number of migrants from Nicaragua rose to almost seven times more.
For her part, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, stated that the massive migration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica and the United States is due to the social, political, economic and human rights crisis in the country. since 2018, it is even worse than the one generated by Daniel Ortega himself in the first Sandinista dictatorship.
“In the last eight months, the number of Nicaraguan refugee and asylum seekers in Costa Rica has doubled; reaching the number of 150 thousand. This represents 3% of the population of Costa Rica », he detailed.
“The number of Nicaraguan people intercepted in the United States is experiencing an unprecedented increase. The number rose from 3,164 in September last year to 92,037 this year. In March the figure reached 16 thousand 88, the highest recorded to date for a single month and eight times higher than that recorded in March of last year », he indicated.
