4 de septiembre 2023
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Migration of former Nicaraguan government employees to the United States has been increasing since 2021. This new reality contradicts the Ortega regime's official propaganda, which regularly attacks "Yankee imperialism" and criticizes the United States.
This situation has been the object of constant denunciations on social media by Nicaraguans exiled and persecuted by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, with calls to reject the presence of "Sapos in the empire". Sapo, meaning toad, is the Nicaraguan slang word for snitch, and is commonly used to refer to people who support the ruling party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
On the social media platforms X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, users have posted photographs of former public officials or militants of the FSLN in the United States with messages accusing them of complicity with the Ortega-Murillo regime and questioning why the Biden administration has welcomed them under the humanitarian permits, or humanitarian parole, program.
"Not even Judas was as much of a traitor as this compañera..., who without hesitation, went from embracing the flag of death [the FSLN] to showing herself with the imperialist flag [the U.S.] now that she is in the land of the 'enemies of humanity'," reads a viral post by sports columnist and former political prisoner Miguel Mendoza, on the social media platform X.
Another viral post was that of the lawyer and former Nicaraguan judiciary official, Yader Morazán, in which he stated: "Let's welcome this paramilitary [operative]..., who couldn't stand the heat and ran, with his children and wife, straight into the arms of the imperialist aggressor."
Rejection of opponents stems from "unprocessed pain"
The backlash against these individuals is "understandable" as a result of "a mixture of unprocessed pain due to the difficult circumstances of exile and the repression they have lived through," says a Nicaraguan sociologist interviewed on condition of anonymity.
The sociologist considers that not all public officials are accomplices of Ortega and Murillo, nor have all the people who have defected from the regime in recent months arrived in the United States through humanitarian parole.
CONFIDENCIAL spoke with former government employees and defectors from the Sandinista Front who are now in the United States. They talked about the reasons for their departure and their experiences in the "Yankee empire."
An opportunity to escape
Alejandro is a former employee of the National Assembly who saw in the humanitarian parole process the opportunity to leave Nicaragua with his family. He is convinced that in Nicaragua "there is not much that can be done" and that migration is "the only alternative" for those who do not agree with the regime.
Alejandro says he quit his job and waited, unemployed, for three months while the U.S. government approved his humanitarian parole application, because he was afraid that if he escaped –as other government employees have done– the regime might take some kind of reprisals against him.
"We thought they were going to detain us at the airport," Alejandro recounts. "When we were waiting for the flight, we were anxious that they would come looking for us. We weren't able to relax until we boarded the plane," he adds.
When Alejandro and his family arrived in the United States, everything flowed "super fast" and with the help of some relatives, they managed to settle in the U.S.
However, now that he's in the U.S., Alejandro has been receiving comments from his ex-colleagues who call him a "traitor." At the same time, he resents the rejection that Nicaraguan exiles express towards deserters of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
Alejandro believes that these types of accusations are "unfair" because "you come fleeing from the regime and then have to deal with this type of thing here."
The regime is no longer a viable option
For the consulted sociologist, the constant flow of former government employees to the United States is due to the fact that the regime is no longer perceived as a politically sustainable option in Nicaragua and because of the country's economic conditions and negative policies.
In Nicaragua "people don't have the economic conditions to be able to manage their lives, even when they are part of a privileged sector that has, or has had, jobs," says the social scientist.
The specialist adds that the regime is reaching "the limit for many sectors of society that are looking to protect themselves, because they don't see that the system is sustainable over time. And the type of crimes and repression [that have been documented] have forced them to leave."
The sociologist also warns that the polarization of Nicaraguan society "is reaching levels of intolerance" and particularly on social media, there is an "exacerbation of negative messages" against anyone who at some point supported the FSLN.
This polarization has led many people to lose sight of the fact that "every human being has the right to migrate according to their own free will" and that the responsible parties for the crimes against humanity committed in Nicaragua are, mainly, "Ortega, Murillo and the ruling leadership," according to the social scientist.
A calling out of the rank and file
Lawyer Yader Morazán, a former official of the Nicaraguan judiciary, believes that exposing the "sapos in the empire" is a way of calling out the Sandinista Front's rank and file, to try to make them understand "that there is no economic or ideological bonanza, nor are the regime's structures that strong." At the end of the day, he warns, "the groups that support Ortega enjoy some kind of benefit and it isn't based on some ideological or revolutionary mystique."
Morazán says that he posts on social media to "create awareness" and not "just to attack" people who –like him – were once public officials or belonged to the Sandinista Front.
Along the same lines, journalist and former political prisoner Miguel Mendoza doesn't think that his posts on social media increase the polarization of Nicaraguan society. On the contrary, he considers that it is a way to show the reality of the country to those who still believe in the rhetoric of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
"When people who are television personalities or Ortega supporters who went to the plaza, who organized [pro-government] marches, or who are well known for being government supporters in their towns and who are now in the empire, that makes people [in the FSLN] wonder if everything the regime has told them is actually true," explains Mendoza.
Morazán and Mendoza agree that there is "resentment" and "indignation" among the Nicaraguans who share and comment on their posts due to the fact that, according to their understanding, the humanitarian parole program was approved to help the victims of the Nicaraguan regime, and so to a certain extent it is "unfair" that people who remained silent for a long time are now "taking advantage" of the situation.
However, U.S. immigration authorities have explained that the humanitarian parole program is not exclusively for politically persecuted people, but for anyone who has a "sponsor" in the U.S. and wishes to immigrate legally.
"They were telling us that we should be expelled from the United States"
Fatima is a Sandinista Front supporter who arrived undocumented with her family in the United States in December 2022, weeks before the humanitarian parole immigration program was approved. She migrated because she wanted to save money, provide better living conditions for her family and then return to Nicaragua in the future.
Everything was going well in the U.S. until July 20, 2023, when she posted a video on her WhatsApp account and some of her acquaintances took screenshots. In the video one of her relatives appears, someone who is a well-known Sandinista militant in her native San Juan de Limay, in Estelí. Since then she and her family have been receiving all kinds of insults on social media.
In addition to posts accusing them of having come to the United States with humanitarian parole when they did not deserve it, "there were people who had the audacity to write me private messages to tell me that we should be deported, that we 'defend the indefensible,'" she says.
Fatima feels these accusations are "of very poor quality" and says they have caused "emotional damage" to her family. "I think everyone is free to vote for who they want and they cannot force you to think like everyone else," she adds.
Migrants with parole fulfill immigration requirements
In response to the complaints of exiled Nicaraguans about the granting of humanitarian parole to officials of the Ortega-Murillo regime, the undersecretary for border policy and immigration of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Blas Nuñez-Neto, explained on July 27 that "there is a very thorough process of reviewing the sponsors and those who benefit from the parole."
"All individuals who are processed for humanitarian parole are screened against all the Homeland Security and Public Safety databases, and people who have any disqualifying information about them are not let in through this process," Nuñez-Neto said.
In other words, if a former regime official or Sandinista militant doesn't show up in the government's security filters, they can enter the United States.
According to data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported by the U.S. CBC News, some 30,736 Nicaraguans migrated to the United States between January 5 and August 22, 2023 after being granted humanitarian parole status.
Overall, some 200,279 citizens from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti have migrated to the U.S. through this program, which allows migrants to travel, live and work legally in the U.S. for two years. Nicaraguans account for only 30,700 of the total, while the other three countries have benefited substantially more.
Internal weakening of the regime
According to the consulted sociologist, it's important to differentiate between government employees who are possibly "distancing themselves, escaping, leaving the system" and others who are potentially "taking on a mission of espionage", which is probably not the majority.
"It's important to understand that [authoritarian] systems break down not only because of the capacity of the opposition to confront them –that is, when there is an opposition, there are strategies and a logic of confrontation– but the regime also breaks down when internally there is a loss of cohesion and stability of the system," says the specialist.
For this reason, the sociologist thinks that "rather than attacking" these former government officials on social media, "whoever is managing the opposition should call for more people who are linked to the regime, or who are inside, to leave [Nicaragua], and to support the end of the regime by sharing information."
In this case, says the specialist, it's important to raise awareness so that government officials distance themselves from the regime. He also thinks it's important to develop a sense of civic consciousness so that when the dictators finally fall, there won't be a system of reprisals for what you might have once thought at some point in your life."
This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff.
