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The decision to end visa-free entry for Cubans — in place since November 2021 — was unlikely to have been a unilateral move by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, but rather a measure coordinated with Havana that also sends a “message to the United States” amid accusations that Nicaragua has served as a springboard for irregular migration, analysts told CONFIDENCIAL.
Nicaraguan lawyer and opposition figure Juan Diego Barberena believes the measure, adopted on February 8, 2026, responds more to a foreign-policy strategy than to any immediate migration situation facing the Ortega regime.
“This is a two-pronged move — it’s been discussed with the Cubans. The goal is not to prevent Cubans from staying in Nicaragua, but to send a message to the United States,” he explained. The Ortega regime, he added, is trying to show willingness to cooperate on an issue sensitive to Washington: migration.
Cuban political scientist and historian Armando Chaguaceda agrees that the decision in Managua could not have been made “without consulting Havana,” especially given the role Nicaragua assumed after Cuba’s July 2021 social protests.
“It is not a unilateral action, although it puts Cuba in a more complicated position (…) Nicaragua had, by negotiation and consensus between the two dictatorships, become a safety valve for the young Cuban population that took to the streets,” said Chaguaceda, who is also a researcher at the think tank Government and Political Analysis (Gapac).
On November 22, 2021, Nicaragua authorized visa-free entry for Cubans. The measure triggered a wave of migration, with Cubans using Nicaraguan territory as a springboard toward the United States.
According to the official discourse, the decision was a “humanitarian measure”. In 2015, Nicaragua had closed its border to hundreds of Cuban migrants seeking to enter from Costa Rica on their way to the United States, and denounced the neighboring country for triggering what it called a “humanitarian crisis” in the region.
Consulted visa policy amid political tensions
The end of visa-free entry comes amid escalating tensions between Cuba and the government of Donald Trump, and one month after the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
Barberena stressed that the new “consulted visa” scheme does not amount to an actual closure of the route. The real impact of the measure will depend on how the requirement is implemented and whether applications end up being approved across the board.
“We will have to see how much this is a maneuver to truly restrict the free movement of Cubans in Nicaragua (…) it may be that every Cuban who applies for a visa will receive one,” Barberena warned.
Visa applications will be handled by the Ministry of the Interior through the e-mail [email protected] and are free of charge.
According to lawyer and former political prisoner Róger Reyes, Ortega and Murillo “are not interested in the migration crisis,” but believe their strategy will allow them “to continue their dictatorship without any pressure.”
“They are trying to clean up their image — they want to curry favor with President Trump’s administration (…) Ortega is reaching the point of balancing his alliances, his economic benefits, and the continuation of his dictatorship without problems with the United States,” Reyes said.
He added that the Nicaraguan regime seeks to “neutralize pressure and sanctions” from Washington and that Ortega and Murillo appear to prefer “getting along better with Trump than with any other ally.”
Opacity in Nicaragua’s migration data
Although the visa is free, the decision creates an obstacle for Cubans who over the past four years had seen Nicaragua as an escape route on their way to the United States. In the first month after the measure took effect, the country recorded the arrival of 6,178 Cubans, according to immigration authorities. Since then, however, official figures have disappeared.
The total number of Cubans who passed through the country is unknown because the Ortega regime keeps public information tightly controlled, allowing it to maneuver politically without “accountability,” analysts say.
During this period, however, 245,210 Cubans were detected in irregular status in Honduras. At least 98,888 of them entered Honduras irregularly from Nicaragua by land, confirming Nicaragua’s role as one of the main starting points for the migration route to the United States.
Encounters with Cuban migrants at U.S. borders dropped sharply in 2025 following Trump’s return to the presidency. According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the number of encounters at the southern border in recent years was:
- 2023: 142 352
- 2024: 150 995
- 2025: 31 944
- 2026: 303
According to Chaguaceda, Nicaragua played a functional role for the Cuban regime by facilitating a relatively “orderly” exit amid a deep social crisis.
Chaguaceda added that this opening also generated economic benefits for sectors close to power. “That orderly exit became a business for the two domes, with airlines, hotels and companies linked to the regimes,” he explained.
Cubans Are Also Moving South
The partial closure of this route, the Cuban historian warned, will not eliminate migration but rather transform it. “When people need to leave, they will find one way or another (…) This drives up costs, and only those who can afford to travel will be able to leave — the poor will not,” Chaguaceda said.
Cuban migration flows, however, are not directed exclusively northward. Part of this migration is also moving south, using countries such as Nicaragua and Costa Rica as transit points or destinations.
Between 2022 and 2024, Costa Rica’s General Directorate of Migration and Foreign Affairs recorded the entry of 6,330 Cubans, of whom 252 crossed through the Peñas Blancas and Las Tablillas land borders. At least 5,518 filed asylum applications.
In 2025, Uruguay also received Cuban migrants and, in that year alone, issued 13,852 identity documents to Cubans for the first time.
“Cubans who were leaving were mainly headed to the United States, but after U.S. measures many stayed in Mexico, and in other countries there are also very large communities (…) We are talking about an island with an impoverished population that has lost approximately one-sixth of its people,” Chaguaceda said.
Cuba Needs That Migration
Human rights lawyer Laritza Diversent, director of the legal advocacy center Cubalex, agreed that the Ortega-Murillo government’s 2021 visa-free policy for Cubans helped the Cuban regime “relieve pressure after the July 11 protests.”
Diversent noted that migration plays a structural role in Cuba’s economic model. “The Cuban economy is extractivist. It depends on people who leave, work abroad, and send money back to their families in Cuba, which produces nothing,” she said, highlighting the growing dependence on remittances for the survival of thousands of households.
Cubalex has also documented cases of arbitrariness by Nicaraguan authorities even before this policy change.
“We have recorded cases of people whom Nicaragua denied entry without any explanation — they were sent back and lost everything,” Diversent said, referring to Cubans who had already sold their belongings or purchased tickets.
For analysts consulted by CONFIDENCIAL, the decision of the Ortega-Murillo regime does not solve the structural causes of Cuban migration.
Measure Comes After the Business Has Ended?
On February 13, 2026, the Ortega-Murillo regime added a group of non-regional countries to its list of 128 nations whose citizens require visas to enter Nicaragua. These countries had previously benefited from visa exemptions and relaxed migration rules that turned Nicaragua into a springboard for irregular migration to the United States.
Countries included in the new requirement are Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, Angola, Egypt, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, whose citizens had previously been able to fly to Nicaragua and obtain a tourist visa upon arrival.
This group of seven countries — mostly African — is among the 20 nationalities of migrants who crossed irregularly into Honduras via the land border with Nicaragua, according to a CONFIDENCIAL review of statistics from Honduras’s National Migration Institute.
The measure comes after U.S. sanctions had intensified and charter flights from those countries had already ceased.
After the migration business was exposed, the United States began sanctioning businesspeople and companies facilitating irregular migration. In January 2025, the U.S. State Department reported that more than 70 charter flight routes transporting migrants had already been shut down, including those linking Nicaragua with Cuba and Libya.
