Nicaragua Frees More Than 200 Political Prisoners and Sends Them to the U.S.

The Biden administration sent a note to Congress informing it that more than 200 political prisoners in Nicaragua were freed and sent to the United States. The U.S. “facilitated their transportation and entry into the United States,” the note said.

The detainees landed in Washington, D.C., around noon Eastern time.

Expat Nicaraguans who had been forced to flee their country were jubilant. Javier Álvarez, 68, heard Thursday morning from Nicaraguan activists that his wife, Jeannine, daughter Ana Carolina, and son-in-law Felix Roig were among the freed prisoners. “This was totally unexpected. But it seems there were secret talks, and they managed this.”

Nicaragua is one of the poorest nations in Latin America, and the economy is in shambles. This has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Nicaragans leaving their country and trying to enter the U.S. illegally.

Washington Post:

The prisoners had endured some of the harshest conditions in any jails in Latin America, according to their families. They were denied visits with relatives and their children for months. Many were not permitted to have books or writing materials; one was reduced to reading the label on a tube of toothpaste, family members said. The prisoners had little access to sun or fresh air. Some lost weight and became gaunt.

One prisoner, Hugo Torres, 73, died in captivity.

Several of the prisoners had planned to run against Ortega in 2021 elections. But they were detained before the balloting, and Ortega cruised to a fourth consecutive term.

Nicaragua’s Judicial Council says the prisoners had been declared “traitors to the nation” and stripped of their citizenship and their nationality.

The administration assures us that all of the prisoners were screened and vetted, including by the FBI, and would be screened again by U.S. Customs and Border Protection upon arrival.

“The decision of the Nicaraguan government is a positive and welcome one,” one administration official told the Post. “We remain steadfast in encouraging additional steps by the government of Nicaragua to restore civil liberties and democracy for the Nicaraguan people.”

Releasing prisoners is usually a prelude to some kind of economic deal or lifting of sanctions. Both actions would be welcomed by Nicaragua’s long-serving dictator Daniel Ortega, whose radical left policies have driven the nation’s economy into the ground.

Since crushing a nationwide anti-government uprising in 2018, he has led a wave of repression. Nearly all of his political opponents were jailed, as were leaders of the business community, human rights activists and even Catholic priests. The government has shut down independent media outlets and around 3,000 nongovernmental organizations.

Recently, the government even started jailing family members of its perceived opponents. In September, police attempted to arrest Álvarez, who had been assisting the families of political prisoners. But he had already fled. So security forces detained his wife, daughter and son-in-law, even though they were not involved in political activity, Álvarez said. Last month, they were sentenced to long prison terms.

Just a reminder: No matter what Democrats say about Ortega today, he was a left-wing hero back in the 1980s when the left actually cheered for a Sandanista takeover. The resulting wave of jailings and executions by Ortega and his cutthroats and the implementation of a Communist economy destroyed Nicaragua until it’s one of the real basket cases of the Western Hemisphere.