USA Sends Nicaraguans to Guantanamo and then to Managua
Flight with 44 deported Nicaraguans left the US Guantánamo Naval Base and secretly arrived in Nicaragua on April 3, according to flight tracking platform.
HAVANA TIMES – The United States government has sent deported Nicaraguan migrants to its naval base (on occupied territory) at Guantanamo, Cuba, with the first flight from there to Nicaragua taking place on Thursday, April 3, 2025, according to information from platforms that track US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE Air) flight operations.
The arrival of this flight has been kept secret by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The flight with Nicaraguan migrants left Guantánamo at 9:48 a.m. (Nicaragua time) and arrived at Managua International Airport at 11:40 a.m., according to FlightAware.
The aircraft, an Airbus A320, departed from Alexandria, Louisiana, carrying 100 deported Nicaraguans. It made a stop in Guantánamo, where it picked up another 44 Nicaraguan deportees, so a total of 144 citizens landed in Managua, according to The New York Times and a report by Thomas Cartwright, who has tracked US deportation flights since 2020. Cartwright is part of the NGO Witness at the Border.
The Trump administration has sent migrants directly from Guantanamo to Venezuela, El Salvador, and more recently to Nicaragua, according to sources consulted by the NYT newspaper. “On Thursday (April 3), ICE repatriated 44 Nicaraguan migrants who had been transferred to the naval base days earlier,” it reported.
The airline Global X (Global Crossing) operated flight number G66194. This company is one of six airlines subcontracted by Classic Air Charters, a company under contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As of early April 2025, around 400 deported migrants from the United States—mostly citizens of Venezuela and Nicaragua—have been sent to Guantánamo, according to The New York Times.
At the end of January 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the expansion of the Guantánamo naval base jail by 30,000 beds, “to detain the worst criminal illegal immigrants who are a threat to the United States people.” The first group of deportees was sent to the naval base on February 5.
Sixth Secret Flight of Deported Nicaraguans
The flight from Guantanamo is the sixth carrying deported Nicaraguans from the US that arrived in Managua during the first months of the Trump administration, according to a CONFIDENCIAL analysis.
Five of the six flights departed from Alexandria International Airport, but this was the first to stop in Guantanamo, according to flight itineraries published by the tracking platforms FlightAware and Avionio. The other flight departed from Houston, Texas.
The deportation flights arrive in Nicaragua roughly every 15 days, landing on the first and third Thursday of each month in the morning. However, the Ortega-Murillo regime withholds information on the number of deportees who have arrived in recent months, and their identities are kept secret.
The arrival of these aircraft is not listed on the platform of the Nicaraguan Airport Administration Company (EAAI), CONFIDENCIAL confirmed. But they do appear on flight tracking platforms and have been documented with photos and videos by aviation enthusiast Nicaraguans on their social media pages.
At the airport, the arrival of the flights is managed by the police through Airport Protection and Security, and by the Army through its Airport Protection and Security Detachment, along with immigration officers. The aircraft are directed to a remote ramp for private flights to avoid contact with regular passengers entering or exiting the terminal.
Guantanamo Operates in a Legal Vacuum
The US immigration service has operated an immigrant detention center at the Guantánamo base for decades, which it manages separately from the prison for terrorism suspects.
Until February 2025, migrants who arrived at the military installation were mostly those intercepted at sea while attempting to reach US shores, primarily from Cuba and Haiti.
The migrant population at the base was historically very low. According to data published by The New York Times, between 2020 and 2023, the center only housed 37 individuals.
The Guantanamo base operates in a legal vacuum where the same immigration protections that apply in mainland US territory do not exist.
The situation in Guantanamo’s immigration jail has historically been opaque, with little public information about what happens there.
A report published in September 2024 by The New York Times, based on internal government documents, revealed that detainees face precarious conditions at Guantanamo, including allegations that they are forced to wear opaque goggles during transfers within the base, that their calls with lawyers are monitored, and that some facilities are infested with rats.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.