One of Nicaragua’s April Mothers Detained in Texas
while awaiting an asylum hearing
The initial hearing in Yadira’s asylum case is scheduled for September 22, 2025. A judge will determine the next steps in her asylum process.
HAVANA TIMES – Yadira Cordoba, a member of the April Mothers, women whose children were murdered in the context of the 2018 protests in Nicaragua, is currently being held at a detention center in San Antonio, Texas, awaiting her hearing for political asylum in the USA. The Nicaraguan was detained by ICE agents on August 20, during a routine immigration appointment.
Yadira arrived in the US in 2023, and asked to be granted political asylum due to the persecution she was suffering from the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua. Her 15-year-old son Orlando Cordoba was shot and killed by a sniper’s bullet to the chest during a demonstration in Nicaragua on May 30, 2018, the country’s Mother’s Day.
Human rights lawyer Pablo Cuevas stated that weeks before being detained, Yadira had appeared before an immigration judge who scheduled a second hearing for 2026. Nonetheless, after receiving an appointment to check in at the ICE office in San Antonio Texas, she complied, “and it was there where they detained her, for no reason at all,” the attorney emphasized.
Immigration attorney Arno Lemus, who is in charge of Ms. Cordoba’s defense, told Telemundo 51 that the member of the April Mothers’ group is facing a process of expedited removal due to a processing error at the border.
“Expedited removal isn’t a process of automatic deportation, but simply enduring the discomfort of defending the asylum claim from inside a detention center. She has the right to tell her story, speak about her life, and explain why she fears returning. She has a very sad story,” the attorney clarified.
The error in Cordoba’s case, Pablo Cuevas pointed out, is that “when someone crosses the border and turns themselves in [asks for asylum] the authorities should indicate that they have expressed credible fear and then leave them at liberty to continue the immigration process.” However, neither Yadira nor many others of us who crossed the border were noted as expressing credible fear,” Pablo Cuevas commented.
Through a search for Yadira Cordoba in the online Court system, the office of Defense Attorney Lemus discovered that she had a hearing scheduled for September 22, 2025.
“It’s a preliminary audience, even though she already had one – they’re starting all over again from scratch,” explained the human rights lawyer.
In search of evidence
Yadira’s family, human rights organizations, released political prisoners, and the April Mothers Association are all engaged in gathering evidence to support her case.
According to Attorney Cuevas, the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) has been in contact with the office of Cordoba’s attorney and offered “all the evidence they’ve compiled on the assassination of her teenage son Orlando, and the persecution that she herself suffered in Nicaragua.”
“We’re speaking with experts, qualified people, whose words hold great weight. Also, I understand that the Center for Justice and International Rights (CEJIL) wants to speak with the lawyer. The April Mothers Association has already issued a statement, and there’s been a meeting with Ronald Cordoba (Yadira’s other son) who has offered a series of evidence,”” Cuevas declared.
Yadira Cordoba’s exile
Speaking to Confidencial in 2024, Yadira Cordoba explained that she left Nicaragua due to veiled threats relayed to her through the pastor of the Church she attended. They came to tell him to have a talk with me, because they knew I was going out on the streets with the Nicaraguan flag to participate in marches and demonstrations. They asked him to advise me, because they wouldn’t want anything to happen to me,” she recalled. Before going to the United States, Cordoba had been in Costa Rica, where she arrived in 2021 to continue the work of demanding justice for the death of Orlando.
Not content with having killed her son, the dictatorship also stole her peace. ““They pursued me; first, I moved houses in Nicaragua, but they didn’t rest until they found me (…) and that’s why I had to leave the country, so that they couldn’t silence me,” she stated at that time.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.