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In the first half of 2025, more than 2,000 Nicaraguan migrants were deported on 19 flights from the United States — half of which passed through the Guantánamo naval base — and were received in secret by Ortega-Murillo regime authorities in Managua.
Despite the official secrecy and Daniel Ortega’s anti-Trump rhetoric, Andrew Selee, director of the Migration Policy Institute in the United States, believes there is a deal between Trump and Ortega to accept the deportees.
“The United States can’t send a plane to Nicaragua without an agreement with the Nicaraguan government. We don’t know what is given in return by the U.S., whether the U.S. applies some kind of pressure, or lifts some kind of pressure it would otherwise have used. But obviously, the Ortega-Murillo regime isn’t receiving these planes for free,” he explained.
In an interview with the program Esta Semana, which airs on CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube channel due to television censorship in Nicaragua, Selee analyzed the impact that the new fiscal law, passed by the U.S. Congress and endorsed by Trump on July 4, 2025, will have on mass deportation policy.
“They were given $45 billion for detention and deportation, more money for the border, more money for the border wall. They’re going to hire more planes to speed up the deportation process and probably also hire more personnel to track down undocumented migrants,” Selee explained. However, he warned that it will be very difficult for them to reach the goal of one million deportations in 2025, out of a total of 14 million undocumented people. “That’s very difficult — maybe half a million in the first year. They will definitely generate fear. All undocumented migrants will have a rational fear of being deported, but the vast majority will never actually be deported from the country.”
Deportations of migrants to Nicaragua are handled by the Ortega-Murillo regime in absolute secrecy. But last Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Managua reported that dozens of Nicaraguans had been deported on a military plane. Why deport migrants on a military flight?
That’s very unusual. They started doing that at the beginning of the Trump administration and then they stopped using military aircraft because it’s more expensive, and they’ve been using the airlines that have the contracted aircraft.
It is not clear to me why they did that, because obviously it calls attention when they send a military plane, and these were part Nicaraguans, part Venezuelans. Maybe they wanted to emphasize that they’re doing deportations to Nicaragua, but we already knew they were sending Nicaraguans to Nicaragua. That has not stopped during the Trump administration.
The truth is that now that the humanitarian parole program — which many Nicaraguans used to enter the U.S. legally, with the consent of the U.S. government — has ended, their permission to stay in the country has expired. As a result, many more Nicaraguans are now left unprotected, undocumented, and subject to deportation.
In the end, U.S. diplomatic sources indicated that only Nicaraguans — not Venezuelans — were on that military flight. But does this mean there’s an agreement between the Ortega dictatorship and the Trump administration to coordinate these deportations?
There has to be. The United States can’t send a plane to Nicaragua without the consent and an agreement with the Nicaraguan government. We saw this with Biden too, and now with Trump — there’s a negotiation for these deportation flights to Nicaragua. We don’t know what the U.S. gives in exchange, whether the U.S. applies some kind of pressure or lifts some kind of pressure it might otherwise use. But obviously, the Ortega-Murillo regime isn’t accepting these planes for free.
The difference with the Biden administration is that the number of Nicaraguan deportees has increased significantly. In this first half of the year, 2,100 migrants have been received on 21 flights from the United States — 40% more than during the same period under Biden. What’s striking is that more than half of these flights stopped at the Guantánamo naval base to pick up deported Nicaraguans. Why send deported migrants to Guantánamo?
They sent Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and people from other countries whose governments were difficult to coordinate returns with, and this is also a way to pressure those governments to take back their nationals so they don’t remain held at Guantánamo. I don’t know if that was part of the pressure put on the Nicaraguan government, but I suspect there’s a negotiation behind it — there almost always is in these cases.
While there have always been undocumented Nicaraguans, there were many who arrived legally, with permission, with their humanitarian parole, they came in line with what the U.S. government asked of them. Now that this has been taken away, suddenly there’s a much larger group that’s truly vulnerable to being deported.
At least 90,000 Nicaraguans entered with parole; of these, 60,000 did not apply for asylum. But it’s estimated that more than 250,000 are currently undocumented and were already at risk of deportation. What happens now that this spending bill has been approved, giving the Trump administration more resources to push its deportation policy?
They were given $45 billion for detention and deportation, plus more money for the border and the border wall. But that $45 billion is specifically focused on detention and deportation.
It’s very difficult for them to recruit new agents, that’s for sure, but it takes a long time. What they are going to do quickly is increase the number of beds, that is their detention capacity so that they can hold more people while they are waiting to be deported. They are going to hire more airplanes to speed up the deportation process and they are probably also going to hire personnel to track undocumented migrants.
What takes up much of ICE agents’ time is tracking down undocumented people — knowing who they are, where they are, what time they get home or go to work — and for all that, they can hire outside contractors.
There will almost certainly be an increase in arrests and deportations, but there are also opposing forces. One is the courts — we’ll have to see where some of the Supreme Court’s initial decisions end up, and detention policies are still being challenged in court in the United States.
Second, public opinion is turning much more negative toward deportations. At first, it was very popular because the public did want Donald Trump to stop the flow at the border and reduce the number of arrivals — he portrayed undocumented migrants as criminals. But now it’s clear they’re mostly targeting people at their workplaces, and the public has become much more skeptical. A majority is now negative toward Trump on immigration — and that shift has really emerged in the past month.
In the case of Nicaragua, Ortega has begun to openly criticize Trump’s deportation policy, but at the same time, the Nicaraguan government has withdrawn the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and has closed several consulates in the United States. What effect does pulling out of these agencies have on the protection of Nicaraguan migrants and refugees in other countries?
We shouldn’t be surprised that the regime in Nicaragua has no real commitment to protecting Nicaraguan migrants and refugees. After all, most of them are fleeing the regime itself — or at the very least the collapse of society and the economy, which stems from the regime’s policies.
I don’t know how much Nicaraguans in the U.S. actually use their consulates. I think they have the same problem as Cubans — in general, they avoid going to the Cuban consulate except when absolutely necessary because they distrust their government very much. It’s the same with Nicaraguans and consular services. Obviously, people sometimes need paperwork and go through with it, but there’s generally no close connection, unlike with other consulates. If you go to the Guatemalan, Mexican or Colombian consulates, they have very direct, frequent contact with their nationals. That’s not the case with Nicaragua and Cuba.
The people who had humanitarian parole and work permits have already been notified — they’ve been told their permits are suspended and they’re being asked to self-deport. Those people are under ICE supervision and control. And I assume those who now send remittances and have to pay that 1% tax can also be located more easily by the state. .
They can be located. I believe that many will change their address, because if they gave their address to ICE or to USCIS, or to any U.S. government agency, many will change their address so that they cannot be located.
In theory, employers have been notified that their workers’ status has been revoked — some companies in the U.S. are on a registry that checks the validity of documents. But many businesses, especially small businesses, won’t even register that the parole program has ended — many may not know. So, surely, some people will manage to keep working legally, and others will lose their jobs — in fact, many probably already have.
What is the government’s actual capacity to increase deportations in the second half of the year, now that they have that big boost in resources you mentioned? You said they can’t just hire more agents, but they have more money now.
Yes, but they’ll be able to contract services that help them, and they’ll have more detention space — so they’ll significantly increase deportations. Arrests and deportations will go up, but it will still be a fraction of the total.
They’ve said they want to reach one million deportations a year — that’s very difficult. It’s not impossible, but at this moment it is. Maybe a year from now they’ll manage a million per year, but there are 14 million undocumented people in the U.S. Even if they reach a million per year for three years — or maybe half a million in the first year — it’s still just a fraction of the total. The probability of any single person being deported is very low. They will generate fear, no doubt — all undocumented people will have a rational fear of being deported, but the vast majority will never actually be removed from the country.
This same spending package includes a one percent tax on remittances.
At first, this was also intended as a way to discourage undocumented migration. Originally, it was supposed to be a 5% tax only on non-citizen migrants. During negotiations in the Senate, it was reduced from 5% to 3.5%, and then in the House it was lowered again to one percent, and now it applies to everyone — citizens and non-citizens alike. It would obviously be better with no tax at all, but in the end, one percent probably won’t change people’s lives or their behavior when it comes to sending remittances. If it were 5%, I think it would have a huge impact.
You mentioned the protests and the unpopularity building around the raids, detentions, and these types of deportations. Is that focused on certain cities in particular? Could it influence the way the Trump administration is carrying out deportations? Is it an effective form of protest?
The visible protests aren’t the ones that are really effective — what’s effective is the public’s discontent. It’s much stronger among Democrats and independents, and weaker among Republicans, but it’s starting to show among Republicans too — especially business owners, mainly in the agricultural sector, who tend to be very supportive of Trump, and in the hospitality and restaurant industries, which have also been strong pro-Trump groups. That’s where he’s feeling some pressure from his own side.
The people protesting in the streets are mostly Democrats and people who hate Trump, but the pushback that actually affects Trump is coming from his own base — pro-Trump business owners who don’t want workplace inspections scaring off their workers or stopping them from showing up.
Polls show that about 40% of the population supports Trump’s immigration policies and control measures, but around 50–55% oppose them — they don’t like how he’s enforcing them. That’s a shift. Just two months ago there was massive support for Trump’s immigration initiatives, because the public saw them as targeting criminals. Not all, but the impression was that most deportees were criminals, and about 60% in the past two months did have some kind of criminal record — maybe not severe, but still. But when the workplace raids started, that changed the profile — now it’s people’s neighbors.
In the United States, undocumented people aren’t a group separate from the rest of us — they’re part of the community. You might think of an undocumented criminal as someone different, but when it’s workers being taken away, it’s people we know personally.
Is there any limit to how far the deportation policy can go, given the concerns from business owners and other sectors about the labor force?
Yes, the limit is Donald Trump. Trump is a political animal, and it all depends on how he reads the situation. Right now, he has Stephen Miller — his Senior Policy Advisor — as the main architect of his immigration policies and really of most domestic policy. But Trump is perfectly capable of changing his mind if he feels enough pressure from business owners, especially those in sectors that are traditionally loyal to him.
What we’ve learned about Donald Trump is that he has instincts but no principles.
He has political instincts — he wants to show he’s tough on immigration — and that won’t change. But he’s also capable of changing specific measures if he senses that public opinion is shifting.
I think at some point there will be some adjustments. He’s already talked — I’ve counted five times — about creating a legal pathway for people who work in agriculture and hospitality. We don’t know of any concrete measure right now, but it’s very likely that someone in the administration is putting pen to paper and trying to design something that fits his criteria.
Stephen Miller won’t like that, but Miller is loyal to Donald Trump, and everyone else in the administration will go along with it. I’m not saying he’ll stop deporting people — that’s always going to continue — but the nature, the pace, and the sectors affected could change a lot, depending on the man in power — President Trump.
