US Sends Nicaraguan Migrants to Guantanamo Before Deporting Them

The U.S. government has sent deported Nicaraguan migrants to the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, with the first flight to Nicaragua taking place on Thursday, April 3, 2025, according to information from platforms that record U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement air operations, known as ICE Air.

The arrival of this flight is kept secret by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

The flight with Nicaraguan migrants departed Guantanamo at 9:48 a.m. (Nicaraguan time) and arrived at Managua International Airport at 11:40 a.m., according to the flight tracking platform FlightAware.

The plane, an Airbus A320, left Alexandria, Louisiana, with 100 Nicaraguan deportees, made a stopover in Guantanamo where it picked up another 44 deportees, so 144 citizens landed in Managua, according to information from The New York Times and a report by Thomas Cartwright, who tracks U.S. deportation flights since 2020. He is part of the NGO Witness at the Border.

Donald Trump’s administration has sent migrants directly from Guantanamo to Venezuela, El Salvador and, most recently, Nicaragua, according to sources consulted by the influential U.S. newspaper. “On Thursday (April 3), ICE repatriated 44 Nicaraguan migrants who had been transferred to the naval base days earlier,” it reported.

Global X Airlines (Global Crossing) was in charge of flight number G66194. This company is one of six airlines subcontracted by Classic Air Charters, a company that has contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As of early April 2025, some 400 migrants deported from the United States, mostly citizens of Venezuela and Nicaragua, have been sent to Guantanamo, according to The New York Times.

At the end of January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered to expand the Guantanamo naval base by 30,000 beds, “to detain the worst criminal illegal immigrants who are a threat to the American people.” The first group of deportees was sent to the naval base on February 5.

Sixth flight of Nicaraguan deportees in secrecy

The flight from Guantánamo is the sixth with Nicaraguans deported from the United States to arrive in Managua during the first months of Donald Trump’s administration, according to a CONFIDENCIAL analysis.

Five of the six flights departed from Alexandria International Airport, but this is the first one to stop in Guantanamo, according to itineraries published by air tracking platforms FlightAware and Avionio. The other flight departed from Houston, Texas.

Flights with deportees arrive in Nicaragua 15 days apart and land on the first and third Thursday mornings of each month. However, the Ortega-Murillo regime hides the data on the number of deportees who have arrived in these months and their identities are kept secret.

The arrival of these aircraft is not registered on the platform of Nicaragua’s National and International Airports Administration Company (EAAI), CONFIDENCIAL confirmed. However, they are registered in the air tracking platforms and have been documented with photos and videos by Nicaraguan aviation enthusiasts on their social media pages.

At the airport, the arrival of flights is handled by the Police through the Dirección de Protección y Seguridad Aeroportuaria de la Policía (Dipsa), and the Army through the Destacamento de Protección y Seguridad Aeroportuaria (Depsa) subordinated to the DID, with Migration officers. The airplanes are sent to a remote ramp for private flights so that they have no contact with passengers departing and arriving at the terminal.

Guantanamo operates under a legal vacuum

The U.S. Immigration Service has operated an immigration detention center at the Guantanamo Bay base for decades, which it manages separately from the prison for terrorism suspects.

The migrants arriving at the military facility until February 2025 were those intercepted by U.S. authorities at sea while attempting to reach U.S. shores, mainly from Cuba and Haiti.

The migrant population at the base used to be very low. According to data published by The New York Times, between 2020 and 2023, the center housed only 37 people.

The Guantanamo base operates in a legal vacuum where the same legal guarantees regarding immigration that apply on the U.S. mainland do not apply.

The situation at the Guantanamo immigration facility has historically been opaque, with little public information about what goes on there.

A September 2024 report by The New York Times, based on internal government reports, revealed that detainees face poor conditions at Guantánamo, including allegations that they are forced to wear opaque vision goggles during transfers within the base, that their calls with lawyers are monitored, and that some facilities are overrun with rats.