The Ortega Regime’s Long Reach Follows Exiled Nicaraguans: “They Won’t Let Us Live in Peace”

A vast surveillance and intelligence network has allowed the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to identify, locate, and spy on Nicaraguans in exile — even when they are hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from the country. In addition, the dictatorship has deployed “a systematic strategy of repression against all forms of opposition, which now extends beyond Nicaragua’s borders,” warns the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN).

Most choose to speak anonymously because the fear of reprisals or that “something might happen” to their families is a reality they live with every day.

The Ortega-Murillo regime’s transnational repression strategy operates with the goal of controlling, intimidating, and neutralizing any form of dissent, wherever it may be found, according to the report Nicaragua: Persecution Beyond Borders, Exile, and Transnational Human Rights Violations.

The eight forms of transnational human rights violations against Nicaraguan exiles identified by the GHREN are:

• Arbitrary deprivation of nationality
• Prohibition from entering one’s own country
  
• Denial of passport issuance or renewal and elimination of official documentation
• Confiscation of property and other assets (including pensions)
  
• Surveillance, threats, and harassment
  
• Punishment of relatives and associates inside the country
  
• Physical violence
• Misuse of international control mechanisms

Three months in a punishment cell, and now “without a homeland”

On February 10, 2023, a video went viral showing a man in a white guayabera shirt, holding a rosary in his hands and wearing a prosthetic leg. He was demanding freedom for then-imprisoned Bishop Rolando Álvarez, one day after the Ortega-Murillo regime expelled 222 political prisoners to the United States. The man was Pedro Gutiérrez, who had already been arrested once before, on July 4, 2018, and spent 18 months behind bars. One day after that act of protest, he was imprisoned again.

“They sent me to a punishment cell, where I spent three months handcuffed 24 hours a day, with a surveillance camera and a light shining directly on my face,” Pedro recalls.

Pedro, an industrial mechanic, was later released from prison but expelled by the dictatorship to Guatemala along with 134 other Nicaraguans on September 5, 2024. However, because he lacks identity documents, he has been unable to find work.

“When I set foot on Guatemalan soil, I felt completely disoriented,” he says. Although the days since have been difficult, he has managed to survive thanks to support from organizations, family, and friends.

Pedro tried to travel to the United States but was denied entry. He was told his statements “lacked credibility,” in addition to facing the regime’s false accusations of drug trafficking and money laundering. The same happened to 38 other exiles. Nonetheless, he was able to bring his son with him to Guatemala; his son later made it to the U.S. and now helps him financially.

Pedro is currently one of twelve released political prisoners approved by the Canadian government for resettlement through a program coordinated by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“I’m excited to start over,” he says, “but I want to move forward and work, because I’ve always done so without depending on others.”

Pedro insists he will continue to raise his voice wherever he goes — even though doing so has already cost him exile and left him “without a homeland.”

“The Only Thing I Know Is That I Can’t Go Back”

“I never imagined I wouldn’t be able to return to Nicaragua when I left on that trip,” says Eugenia, a woman from the south of the country. When she left, she told authorities her trip was for a business event, though in reality it was for a religious one. “I didn’t even post a photo from the trip to protect myself, but I guess they knew I’m active in my town’s Catholic Church,” she explains.

She prefers not to mention what month, but it happened in 2024. “A day before my flight, the airline notified me that the Nicaraguan government was not allowing me to enter my own country. It was a hard blow, like lightning struck my entire body,” she recalls.

Since then, in the solitude of exile, Eugenia has spent countless hours trying to “figure out” why this happened to her. But she never finds a clear answer. “I think I’ll never know,” she resigns. She’s thought it might be because she’s active in her church, because her children joined the protests, or because, even though she doesn’t get involved in politics, she’s been “labeled as an opponent.”

“Every time I think about it, I feel it could have been for any of those reasons, or maybe a mix of all of them. The only thing I know is that I can’t go back,” she laments.

Even though she couldn’t return, Eugenia says the harassment of her family continues. “They won’t let us live in peace,” she insists.

Eugenia speaks with pain about how the regime’s propaganda “sells the idea that Nicaragua is a country with open arms,” when in reality “it expels us because we don’t think like them.”

At least 318 Nicaraguans have been left in migration limbo between June 2018 and August 2025 after being de facto banished, having been denied reentry into Nicaragua, according to the GHREN report.

“They Never Gave Me My Daughter’s Passport”

When Paola went to apply for a passport for her youngest daughter at the Immigration office inside a Managua shopping mall, she was told she had to go in person to the main office. “From that moment, I knew something was wrong,” she recalls.

She waited almost a month after the original appointment date, and when she finally overcame her fear, she went with her husband and three children. “They made us wait for hours and never gave us an answer,” she explains.

Paola suspected they would deny the passport because she had been detained for several days during a police sweep against people labeled as opposition supporters, and because a police officer had been visiting her weekly.

“The woman attending us kept calling her superiors and telling them the passport was ready, but it seemed they told her she couldn’t give it to me,” Paola recalls.

The officer kept asking why she needed a passport for her daughter, and Paola replied it was for a future trip to Costa Rica. “She’s here alone with her daughter,” the immigration officer told her superior over the phone.

Paola’s husband and two older children were waiting outside. The officer even went out to look for them but couldn’t find them. Finally, she told Paola she would have to come back. “But come alone, without your daughter,” she insisted. That’s when Paola realized she could never return to the Immigration office, because “they could detain me or make me disappear.”

Almost immediately, she prepared to leave for Costa Rica with her husband and three children, where they now live in exile. “They never wanted to give me my daughter’s passport, they denied her right to a travel document,” she says.

The Ortega-Murillo regime has severely obstructed — or outright denied — access for people in exile and their relatives to official documents, including passports, birth certificates, marriage records, and academic transcripts, with the intent of “further uprooting them and cutting their ties to their country of origin,” the GHREN notes.

Losing Her Pension Has Left Her “Completely Dependent”

Brenda María was imprisoned, and later the dictatorship exchanged her prison sentence for exile, statelessness, and the confiscation of her retirement pension. From that moment, she felt her life changed completely — though, as she says, it was “numbed by the feeling of freedom after 15 months in prison.”

At first, she wasn’t fully aware of her exile because she was “enjoying freedom and being with my family, and it wasn’t until they decreed the confiscation of all my property that I realized I had lost everything: my country, my pension, my home, my rights.”

For Brenda María, being stateless reduces a person to being “thrown into the world with nothing to hold on to.”

Losing her pension income has been a trauma that’s not easy to overcome — especially as a retired woman. “In my case, I think the greatest impact has been emotional, because even though I have the unconditional support of my family, losing such an important source of income leaves me dependent on others,” she explains.

Although her family supports her financially, she says it still affects her deeply because “all my life I was the provider for my household and for my own needs, and that gives you a sense of security, stability, and self-confidence.”

Brenda María worked for many years in international cooperation organizations and says she used to have a “good pension” that allowed her to “live decently.”

She is also saddened by having been torn away from her home, her family, her friends, and her homeland. Her health deteriorated during her imprisonment, but she says she is now “stable.”

“I survive thanks to the love and care of my husband and family. I’m not working; I dedicate myself to caring for my loved ones and to keeping my voice raised for the freedom of political prisoners,” says Brenda María.

“They’ve Taken Photos of Us at Protests in Costa Rica”

Adonis left university in April 2018 after joining the protests in Nicaragua. Five months later, he was forced into exile. “I was threatened with imprisonment — those threats still persist,” he explains.

When he arrived in Costa Rica, he began organizing with other refugees, holding sit-ins and marches to draw attention to the human rights violations taking place in Nicaragua.

“Since then, the dictatorship has sent people to watch us because it wants to control us, they don’t want to let us live in peace, even though we were already forced to leave our country,” he says.

He recalls that during the first demonstrations outside the Nicaraguan Embassy in San José, Costa Rica, there were suspicious people taking photographs.

“After the protests ended, people were followed by unknown individuals, and many of us started warning each other about what was happening,” he says.

Because of that, Adonis stopped attending the protests outside the Nicaraguan Embassy, and later, even other demonstrations in Costa Rica. “I even avoid going to cultural events or Nicaraguan food fairs,” he adds. He believes many other exiles feel the same way. “Fewer and fewer people were showing up out of fear, and now the terror they’ve managed to instill is much greater,” he says.

Adonis says acts of surveillance, threats, and harassment have crossed borders. “I’ve received messages from unknown numbers or fake social media accounts threatening me,” he says.

According to Yader Valdivia, a lawyer with the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, reports of surveillance and threats against exiles have increased since 2024.

“At least a dozen people have reported being followed in public places such as markets or during protest sit-ins. There are also at least six reports of unknown individuals asking about exiles near their homes,” Valdivia warns.

He adds that some exiles have received messages from unknown numbers, including photos of themselves near their homes or as they were getting into an Uber. “The goal is to intimidate them, to remind them they’re being watched, and this has generated a great deal of fear among these citizens,” the lawyer emphasizes.

Her Children and Granddaughter Were “Forced to Leave Their Home”

Rosa Ruiz, mother of the Costa Rican–Nicaraguan doctor Yerri Estrada, imprisoned by the Sandinista dictatorship since August 13, 2025, says she is living a nightmare. It wasn’t enough for them to imprison her son; after she dared to denounce his detention, the regime began “punishing” the rest of her family still in Nicaragua.

Rosa reports that her two other children, Maura Estrada and a 14-year-old boy, along with a five-year-old granddaughter, are now living in “forced displacement” after being “forced to leave their home” due to constant threats and harassment by police and civilians.

“They even threatened my younger son with an arrest warrant, and that’s a horrendous crime,” she says. Even though they are now “in hiding” elsewhere, the harassment at their home in León continues.

“They have to stay locked inside where they are, and it’s terrible to do that to two children who struggle to understand why they can’t go outside,” she laments.

She also says both minors had to “drop out of school.” Her son was in his third year of secondary school, and her granddaughter was in her final year of preschool.

Now living in exile herself, this mother says she won’t remain silent until her son is free. “I’m going to keep raising my voice—they won’t silence me,” she insists.

Although her public denunciations helped pressure authorities to allow Yerri’s fiancée to visit him on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, and to later release photos and videos of him nine days after that visit, Rosa says she now considers him “disappeared” again.

“By persecuting my daughter, who was supposed to visit him and bring food or medicine, they are violating all of his rights,” she explains.

From Surveillance to Physical Violence

On Saturday, October 4, 2025, academic Adrián Meza, exiled in Costa Rica, reported an intelligence operation against him, for which he blamed the Nicaraguan Army. A man had shown up at his home pretending to deliver his vehicle.

“The security guards didn’t let the intruder in. When he realized I was being notified about the unusual visit, he disappeared without a trace,” said Meza, who was the rector of Nicaragua’s Paulo Freire University, shut down by the National Assembly at the request of the Sandinista executive branch.

Physical violence against Nicaraguans in exile has become “a growing concern in recent years,” particularly in Costa Rica and Honduras—countries where murders and attempted murders of Nicaraguan exiles have been recorded, the most recent being the killing of retired Army major Roberto Samcam.

The GHREN has also documented other exiled Nicaraguans who were victims of attacks, including Joao Maldonado, who survived two assassination attempts in Costa Rica in 2021 and 2024, and Rodolfo Rojas Cordero, who was found dead in Honduras in 2022. The report emphasizes that both the survivors and those killed had been harassed and had received death threats and warnings before the attacks.

It adds that these murders and other violent incidents “highlight the urgent need to strengthen international cooperation, reinforce protection mechanisms for exiled populations, and carry out thorough investigations into the transnational dimension of the threats they face.”

Although these crimes remain under investigation, the Group of Experts notes that “the possibility cannot be ruled out that these murders and attempted murders are part of a broader pattern of transnational human rights violations targeting Nicaraguans in exile until exhaustive and independent investigations are conducted.”

The GHREN calls for these investigations not only to pursue the direct perpetrators but also “to examine all possible motives, including political ones, and seek to establish the responsibility of those who may have ordered or planned the crimes.”

Misuse of International Control Mechanisms

Indigenous professor and former political prisoner Gabriel Putoy, now a refugee in Costa Rica, lost a formal job in exile after the country’s financial system shut him out and his employer decided to revoke his contract. This happened in February 2024. The reason: a Nicaraguan judge aligned with the dictatorship issued an arrest warrant against him, accusing him of obstruction of public duties to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua.

Putoy visited three different bank branches to open an account where his monthly salary could be deposited for his administrative work at a cleaning company. Each time, he was told that entering his name into the system triggered an alert. He received the same response when he asked another bank why his account had been closed.

According to the GHREN report, in a further attempt to restrict exiles’ freedom of movement, Nicaraguan authorities have used various mechanisms such as reporting their passports as stolen or revoked, and also making “improper use” of Interpol’s “red notices”—international requests to locate and provisionally arrest individuals for extradition purposes.

Among the Nicaraguan citizens wanted by the State of Nicaragua are Pedro Javier Fernández Sandoval, René Navarrete Rivera, and Serapio Ramiro Fernández Rodríguez, who participated in the 2018 roadblock protests and whom the regime accuses of killing a police officer and a civilian in the department of Río San Juan in 2022. Also implicated in that case are Reinaldo Picado Miranda, who was detained in Costa Rica but later granted refugee status, and Douglas Gamaliel Pérez Centeno, who was extradited to Nicaragua on February 16, 2024.

But the victims of this type of repression go far beyond these cases. At least 39 of the 135 political prisoners banished to Guatemala on September 5, 2024, were rejected by the U.S. government’s Safe Mobility program. Human rights defenders warned that the main reason for these rejections—despite the fact that their release and transfer to Guatemala were coordinated by the U.S. government itself—were the “fabricated crimes” filed against them by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.