The Persecution of Nicaragua’s ‘De Facto Stateless’
The Ortega-Murillo regime’s latest frontier of repression
The Ortega regime leaves exiled journalists and opposition citizens without passports or legal identity. The UN Group of Experts denounces this tactic as “de facto statelessness.” Those affected are asking Spain to grant them nationality.
By Wilfredo Miranda Aburto (El Pais)
HAVANA TIMES – Journalist Nestor Arce was headed to Spain to receive the Ortega y Gasset Award in May 2022 when, in Costa Rica, at the Iberia airline counter, he was told he could not travel because his passport had been reported as “stolen” by Nicaraguan immigration authorities. The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had also issued an alert regarding his US visa, allegedly lost. He did everything he could to figure out what was happening with his documents, but the director of the media outlet Divergentes suspected the truth: the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo had punished him this way.
Weeks before the incident at San Jose’s Juan Santamaría Airport, Arce had crossed into Costa Rica via an irregular border point, where he sought exile due to persecution for leading one of Nicaragua’s most influential youth media outlets. The warning to flee came from within the General Directorate of Immigration: a source told him he was a “PIN target”—a “person of interest” in the Sandinista migration repression jargon.
Arce had applied to renew his passport because it was set to expire within six months, and exile was becoming a near certainty due to constant harassment. He wanted to leave the country with valid documents. However, immigration officials never issued the passport. He waited for more than a month, returning several times to inquire about the delay. “First they told me there was a problem with the photo, that I needed a new one. Then they said my beard was too long. Then that I was wearing a black shirt… Finally, I went to the immigration office, and the source told me to stop acting crazy by showing up for the passport—it wasn’t going to happen. He said I better leave Nicaragua because I was a PIN target,” Arce told El País.
From that moment, Arce became trapped in a migration limbo: “de facto statelessness,” one of the latest repressive tools used by the Ortega-Murillo regime. After facing global condemnation for stripping over 400 people of their citizenship by law, the government shifted tactics in 2023. Instead of explicitly revoking nationality—with all the political costs—that move entailed, it began using a quieter but equally brutal strategy: canceling or denying passport renewals, particularly for those in exile. The goal is the same: to leave critics without a country, without documents, and without a path home.
While there are no official numbers on how many people are de facto stateless, the phenomenon is more widespread than it seems. Many victims stay silent out of fear or hope that they may eventually renew their documents. However, thousands report being stranded, unable to travel or legally identify themselves.
Alarming data shows that, between January and May 2025 alone, over 3,000 Nicaraguans were barred from entering their own country by immigration authorities. The severity of this repressive tactic was such that the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua dedicated a special section to it in their latest report, warning that such practices violate international law and may constitute crimes against humanity.
“The strategy goes beyond the formal act of denationalization. Authorities have denied the renewal of identity documents, reported passports as ‘stolen’ without justification, and blocked access to basic certificates like birth records or criminal background checks. They’ve even notified foreign authorities about the supposed invalidity of visas, leading to arrests or travel restrictions at airports. These administrative maneuvers become a sophisticated mechanism of exclusion and silencing, in which victims lose not only their country but their legal existence,” the UN report states.
Reed Brody, an American lawyer and member of the UN Expert Group on Nicaragua, told El País that this tactic “is one of the cruelest used by the Nicaraguan government.” “It’s used as a form of transnational persecution to intimidate and attempt to silence critical voices—those who report human rights violations. It denies them entry to Nicaragua or access to vital consular services like passport renewal. This leaves them in legal limbo and deprives them of the legal and social protections they need to move forward with their lives. It’s like condemning them to civil death.”
Journalists Issue an SOS to Spain
This week in San José, a group of seven Nicaraguan journalists denounced that they have been unable to renew their passports. Among them is Gerald Chavez, director of Nicaragua Actual, who told El País he has been waiting two years for a passport renewal, a process repeatedly denied by the Nicaraguan consulate in Costa Rica. “I’ve written many times to ask what happened to my passport. The only response I’ve received is that if I want a passport, I have to go to Nicaragua,” he says. But for him, returning to his country would be almost a prison sentence.
In this context, 20 journalists have issued an SOS to the Spanish government, asking for support in granting them citizenship, as was done with more than 400 dissidents labeled “traitors to the homeland” and stripped of their nationality. The Madrid Press Association backed the journalists’ appeal to access the same protection mechanism Spain offered the others exiled by law.
“This association urges the Spanish government to consider this group of reporters as de facto stateless, since their passports were confiscated or not renewed, and they are barred from reentering Nicaragua. As the affected journalists remind us, they are in exile due to the persecution and harassment by the Ortega-Murillo regime, which has also confiscated or destroyed their media outlets,” the statement reads.
First published in Spanish by El Pais and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.