Ortega’s border business: $6,000 to be able to return to Nicaragua

José David hadn’t left Nicaragua for more than two years. In April, he decided to take advantage of Easter vacations to travel to Miami to visit his aunts and uncles and cousins. Delighted to be reunited as a family, they went to a theme park in Orlando, shopped, and ate a lot. But the good times ended when, the night before he was to board his flight back to Managua, the airline sent him an email in which it notified him that immigration authorities had denied his re-entry into the country. His worst fears had become reality.

José David’s real name is not José David. He asked EL PAÍS for anonymity out of fear of reprisals. He knew it was a possibility that he would be denied re-entry — it had been one of the reasons why he hadn’t left Nicaragua in years. He saw on the news that one of the new repressive tactics of the co-presidential regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo was preventing citizens from returning to their own country.

Those who have been impacted are generally people who participated in the 2018 protests, family members of exiles, influencers, or entrepreneurs. Since he didn’t fit into any of those categories, José David decided to take the risk and buy the ticket to Miami. But he found himself pulled into hurricane of migratory repression, like thousands of others. Some people have been denied re-entry for the simple fact of once having posted a critical comment about the government on social media.

Stranded in Miami, the young man became desperate. His only goal was to try to get back to Nicaragua, to his stable bank job, his girlfriend, his family. At the end of April, he heard a rumor that if he wrote to the Department of the Interior, it could be one way to advocate for his return. “Some said that we should write a letter asking Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Others said you had to pay a certain amount of money,” José David remembers.

Over 300 cases and fees of up to $25,000

And he did. He wrote an email to the Department of the Interior, directed to the vice-minister, Luis Cañas, who is known as the architect of this wave of migratory repression. The Sandinista authorities asked him for a $1,000 deposit so they could “study his case,” and that if he was “approved,” he would have to pay $5,000 more to be admitted into national territory. Such charges are based on the victim’s financial resources.

To guarantee that Sandinista immigration agents can review every case among citizens returning to Nicaragua, the regime requires airlines to send passenger lists with three days’ notice. From there, “the lottery” of being profiled for extortion begins. A source linked to immigration authorities told this publication that after 2018, offiicals created lists of people who were banned, though those lists have grown considerably in the years that followed.

“All you have to do is look up passenger information on the internet, particularly on social media, and if they have a post against the government, their re-entry is automatically denied. I don’t know why, but it’s what we’ve been instructed to do,” says the source. Other cases that have been confirmed by media reports involve individuals who have no political ties, typically Nicaraguans who have been living in the United States for decades.

With the help of his family members in Miami, José David accepted his fate and got together the money. During the “negotiation” process, he was told he was a “coup plotter” and accused of “betraying the nation.” He paid the extortion fee, and was warned not to speak out about or file a complaint regarding what had happened. José David’s is no isolated case.

Human rights organizations, among them Monitoreo Azul y Blanco, calculate that so far in 2025, more than 300 people have been prevented from returning to the country. The real total, the organization states, could be much higher because of the fear of reporting such repressive tactics. Three more testimonies that were collected by EL PAÍS and others published by Nicaraguan news organizations indicate that fees involved with this kind of extortion, including those charged to businesses in exchange for letting their employees return, can be more than $25,000.

“Devastating impact”

There have also been cases in which the Sandinista regime, through its institutions, levies requests for participation in or sponsorship of political activities as a test of “goodwill” toward the regime. One such case that has generated attention is that of influencer Valeria Sánchez, who was denied entry to the country, but appeared in her home in Managua a month later, offering no explanation for the delay to her return to Nicaragua.

Sánchez went from being active on social media with highly respected Nicaraguan companies, to only sharing her everyday life with her family. According to the influencer, she has slowed the pace of her content in order to focus on personal projects with her spouse.

The UN’s Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua has stated that deportations and bans on re-entry form part of a systematic plan of persecution and exile ordered by Ortega and Murillo. According to its latest report, presented in Geneva on September 23, these measures have turned hundreds of Nicaraguans “into de facto stateless persons, stripped of their legal identity and livelihoods.” “Their entire lives are being systematically dismantled, beginning with their uprooting and the erosion of their legal identity, leading to economic collapse, social isolation and omnipresent surveillance,” warned Jan-Michael Simon, chair of the UN group.

Such practices are considered by the UN to be crimes against humanity, and the organization has added them to the list including forced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions that have been documented since 2018. “The human impact is devastating: families torn apart, citizens trapped in distant countries, and companies held for ransom,” it emphasizes.

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