Fear of Leaving and Not Returning to Nicaragua
The anxiety of a forced Exile
When traveling outside of Nicaragua, many face the fear of not being able to return and suffering forced exile. Three Nicaraguans share their stories
By Ivan Olivares (Confidencial
HAVANA TIMES – To travel abroad or to stay? This is the dilemma faced by many Nicaraguans who fear they won’t be allowed back into Nicaragua if they decide to travel. The fear of forced exile, and even of losing their properties, bank accounts, or retirement pensions, holds people back from traveling or simply heightens the anxiety of those who choose or need to go somewhere.
Josué an employee at a regional financial institution; Orlando a marketer working remotely for an international company; and Estela a mother who hasn’t been able to visit her exiled daughter for nearly three years, tell about their fear of traveling and not being allowed to return to Nicaragua.
Until early 2024, the ban on re-entering Nicaragua seemed to be an order applied only to citizens accused of being “opponents,” whether they were or not. But as the months pass, the order to block Nicaraguans trying to return has expanded to affect not just those who oppose the regime, but any citizen indiscriminately.
Living with the rear of not returning to Nicaragua
“If they put you on their red list, they strip you of your homeland. They take your assets. They confiscate everything. That’s the terror we live with — there’s terrible anxiety in the country,” said the administrator of a company in the food sector, although these illegal confiscations are mainly targeted at people convicted of alleged political crimes or at non-profits that have been shut down.
“It is a form of repression so that those of us who, according to them, raise their voices in the country, leave little by little and simply do not want to return to Nicaragua because of the fear that they themselves have generated,” said a citizen of the capital who asked to be identified as Eduardo.
Other Nicaraguans, who agreed to share their experiences anonymously, explained how the fear of traveling keeps them from fulfilling work goals or even meeting basic needs like visiting a daughter abroad.
“I’m afraid to travel and not be allowed back into Nicaragua, because then I wouldn’t be able to keep caring for my grandmother,” said Orlando, who lives in a town near Managua.
Thousands of dollars charged to avoid forced exile
Two Nicaraguans familiar with the fear of traveling and not being allowed back into the country also revealed the existence of an extortion scheme targeting wealthier travelers, who are forced to pay bribes of several thousand dollars to be allowed back in.
“I have a friend who was charged $5,000 just to be allowed to return to the country — he had no choice but to pay it,” said Adolfo, a Nicaraguan businessman who has lived abroad for decades.
“I know someone who had to pay $60,000. I know cases of $25,000, $10,000, $5,000. They assess you based on your means. It’s like a tax: if this traveler is worth a million, they charge $50,000; if he has half a million, they ask for $25,000. If he has less, they charge less — but they make you pay, under threat that if you report it, they’ll imprison you, seize your assets, and kick you out of the country again,”
In April 2025, La Prensa newspaper revealed that the regime charges people denied re-entry to be allowed back into Nicaragua. In June, the outlet Divergentes reported that the dictatorship demands at least $6,000 per citizen.
Estela: more than two years without seeing her daughter
A mother and homemaker, Estela has spent more than two years without seeing her exiled daughter. She fears leaving the country and being barred from returning — or facing political persecution if she does.
Estela is a homemaker who hasn’t seen her daughter in more than two years. Her daughter left Nicaragua in mid-2022 to evade an arrest warrant issued against her on accusations of alleged “terrorism.” Since then, mother and daughter have stayed in touch only by phone, careful not to say more than necessary.
If those who have managed to save enough money to become targets for extortion schemes worth thousands of dollars are afraid, so are people with middle incomes — and even those with little to their name, like Estela.
Estela faces a dilemma: whether to try visiting her daughter by following legal procedures or to take the same route as her daughter and attempt to enter Costa Rican territory irregularly. Both options carry difficult costs. Traveling legally means applying for a passport that might be denied after she’s already paid for it. It would also put her back under the regime’s scrutiny. Both her and her other son, a former police officer who refused to return to the force to avoid repressing Nicaraguans.
Estela fears they will let her leave the country but then reject her when she tries to return to Nicaragua, which would mean losing the life she’s built and the small home she managed to build in a northern municipality with the help of both her children. Crossing irregularly is definitely not an option, as the physical decline that has come with age makes it impossible even to attempt entering Costa Rica through the backcountry paths.
Orlando is afraid, but will travel
He is a marketer who works from home. Despite his comfortable economic situation, he fears traveling and losing everything, but he also doesn’t want to feel trapped.
Orlando works from home, doing marketing for an international company. The good salary he earns, combined with his saving habits, have allowed him to build his house on a lush family property in a municipality near Managua. Because of this, he hesitates about leaving the country, as he does not want to lose contact with his grandmother, the closeness of his puppies, the house itself, or the savings he has been able to accumulate.
For more than a year, Orlando has had plans to travel but has refrained from doing so. “I don’t know if I will be banned from returning to Nicaragua. I used to travel frequently, but I’ve stopped. Many of my relatives don’t travel either because they fear they won’t be allowed back, that their properties will be taken, or that their money in the bank will be stolen,” he recounts.
Despite the fear, Orlando resists living as if Nicaragua were a cage, concluding that “sometimes you just have to take the risk.”
“I’m still thinking about traveling soon, but I don’t want to live with the paranoia of what might happen or not happen,” he says. That is why, since he is determined to travel—to El Salvador, or Guatemala; to Brazil or Argentina—he is preparing for the possibility of exile by gathering the necessary documents to leave his properties in the care of someone he trusts.
Orlando explains that the root of his fear is more related to his family than to his own actions. “I supported the protests, and I’m not in favor of the current government system, but although I personally wasn’t heavily exposed, some of my family members were, and I have relatives who haven’t been allowed to enter the country because of that,” he details.
Josué: technology as a professional lifeline
For several years he has worked in a regional financial institution and used to travel frequently. He stopped doing so for fear of being banished.
Josué is a professional working for a financial institution where his role requires multiple trips per year to represent the company’s interests. Until 2024, he had to cover several regional destinations, with expenses paid, to generate reports showing the international progress of the business. But not anymore.
Since late 2024, Josué has refused to travel, fearing expulsion at the border if regime agents find his old social media posts. The same ones he shared during the heat of the April 2018 Rebellion. Being stuck outside the country would not only separate him from his wife and children but also from the rest of his family.
From the economic point of view, he says he doesn’t believe they would dare confiscate his house or car, but he doesn’t rule it out. The problem would be the need to maintain a home in the country where he would relocate, and another in Nicaragua, even if the company kept him employed, as has happened with other officials forced into exile.
Fortunately, when he shared his fears with company executives, he found the understanding he needed—likely because the fear of not returning to Nicaragua is shared.
His luck is also that technology allows him to work remotely, “while this risk subsides, which eventually will have to happen,” he trusts. “For now,” he recounts, “no one in the company has been pressured to travel.” Looking back, he realizes the pandemic served as an experiment proving that his work can be done remotely without losing quality.