The United Nations (UN) Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air defines human smuggling as “the enablement, for financial or another material gain, of the illegal entry of a person into a State.” The activity implies the existence of highly organized criminal groups that operate transnationally with large profits that violate the human rights of migrants. It is, therefore, considered a transnational organized crime.
Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s dictatorship has facilitated the transit of thousands of irregular migrants headed for the United States and profits from this through two different methods. The first consists of enabling and allowing the passage of thousands of migrants upon payment of between $150 and $200 per person to receive a tourist card. This allows them to transit by land from the southern border Nicaragua shares with Costa Rica to the north.
In April 2024, Honduras reported that more than half a million irregular migrants, mainly Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, Ecuadorians, and other Latin American countries and even from Europe, Asia, and Africa, entered its territory from Nicaragua.
The second method is even more insidious, as it involves the direct complicity of the Ortega Murillo dictatorship. They allow the arrival of charter flights from different countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, which land at Managua’s Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, loaded with migrants who use the country to shorten their journey to the southern border of the United States.

It is clear that these flights have the regime’s blessing, and that there is a transnational logistical ‘infrastructure’ to operate them, as well as a network of internal collaborators who are in charge of receiving the migrants, taking them to lodgings to rest, and then transferring them to the northern border to continue their journey to the United States. In this case, migrants also pay between $150 and $200 for a tourist card that allows them to stay in the country for up to four days.
According to official data, 198,500 passengers arrived in Nicaragua in the first three months of 2024 alone. By the end of 2023, newspaper reports stated that 36 commercial flights from Haiti landed in three days. Additionally, the regime has eliminated visa requirements for citizens of many countries, including Cuba, Haiti, Qatar, and Angola.
The Ortega-Murillo regime decided to continue openly defying US warnings and, in May, began to receive direct flights from Libya with migrants of different nationalities.

And while migrant smuggling continues to exacerbate the migration crisis facing the United States on its southern border, in Nicaragua, it is causing an exponential growth in income for the State through immigration fees. Human smuggling has become one of the most lucrative and unscrupulous businesses of the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo dictatorship, which takes advantage of the yearning of thousands of migrants who leave their countries with the goal of reaching the United States.
In recent years, Central America has become a transit region for large flows of migrants of different nationalities, who cross almost the entire region to reach the United States. But in Nicaragua, it is different. Offering the Managua International Airport as an air bridge to shorten the crossing promotes the increase in the flow of migrants from various continents to use it as a political tool to provoke confrontations with the United States. At the same time, it takes advantage of it as a means of illicit enrichment for the Ortega-Murillo family clan.
The Political Side of Migrant Smuggling through Nicaragua

Behind the transit of thousands of irregular migrants that the Nicaraguan dictatorship has facilitated, there is an important economic element. However, this scheme also includes relevant political components that should be understood and highlighted.
Before 2021, migrants took the route through some South American countries, from where they started their journey by land. They then crossed the jungle between Colombia and Panama, known as the Darien Gap. They continued through Central America and Mexico until they reached the United States’ southern border.
The Darien Gap has complex natural conditions and is plagued by criminal gangs and drug traffickers. Robbery and sexual violence are a daily occurrence, and it is necessary to hire “coyotes” to make the crossing, which can take anywhere from 3 to 15 days.
Despite these dangers, according to the United Nations (UN), between 2022 and 2023, more than 750 thousand migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Senegal, India, and other nations risked their lives on this route to reach the United States. The Ortega Murillo regime saw an economic opportunity in the desperation of these people. As of 2021, it opened a transit option that avoids the Darien Gap. It eliminated the visa requirement, first for Cubans, followed by Haiti, India, Senegal, and more recently Qatar.
Currently, citizens of more than twenty countries from all continents benefit from Daniel Ortega’s political decision to encourage irregular migration to the United States. The citizens of these countries arrive by plane in Nicaragua without leaving a trace because their passports are not stamped, and from there, they continue the journey by land to the north.
Avoiding the risks involved in crossing the Darien Gap and reducing travel days by using the air bridge through Nicaragua has a very high price, which translates into huge profits for the Ortega Murillo regime and all members of the logistical chain involved in this smuggling of human beings. But this is not the first time Ortega has used the migration crisis as a political weapon. In 2015, he blocked the passage of thousands of Cubans who used the air route, Havana-Ecuador-Panama, and from there continued by land to the United States.
At that time, he blocked their way to boast to the United States of having turned Nicaragua into a containment wall for migrants and drug trafficking. It is no coincidence that because of this change of policy, the suspension of visas began with the Cubans. The island is currently facing enormous economic difficulties and shortages. The people are fed up, and despite the repression, they are losing their fear of expressing their discontent publicly.
One solution to this crisis is to allow the departure of those who want to leave and can pay for the less risky option offered by Ortega. The same happens with Venezuelans; now, they can fly to Nicaragua without going through the Darien Gap.
And in the case of Nicaraguans, since the outbreak of the socio-political crisis in 2018, there has been the biggest exodus in the country’s history, with the departure of approximately 13 percent of the population.
In this way, the regimes of Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela stimulate irregular migration to reduce internal discontent, confident that this will guarantee them a longer permanence in power. They also benefit indirectly from the remittances that migrants send to their families.
The benefit of this strategy is so considerable that they opened up the route and created the necessary logistics for migrants to move without any problem. A few weeks ago, they announced a new air route between Caracas-Havana and Managua, adding frequencies to the existing flights.
Ortega’s strategy is so effective that before 2021, migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) outnumbered those from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela by 2.5 times. As of 2021, with Nicaragua enabling the air bridge, migrants from the latter three countries outnumber those from the Northern Triangle by up to 2 times.
The strategy proved so efficient that it was exported to Europe, Asia, and Africa, turning the human trafficking chain into a transcontinental one. In the last few weeks alone, three charter flights of a Libyan airline, linked to individuals connected to the Russian government, landed in Managua. Vladimir Putin’s regime has declared that the United States is an enemy country, and Ortega has not only expressed that it has an alliance with Russia but is promoting it.
In addition to the above, the encouragement of this transit alternative for irregular migration has produced a social, economic, and security problem within the United States, where the migratory crisis and the unstoppable flow of migrants that continues to arrive at the southern border will be one of the most relevant issues in the November elections. This has multiple consequences, for example, the possibility of terrorists infiltrating amidst these migrants, which in the future could cause security problems in the country.
For the Nicaraguan Democratic Concertation CDN-Monteverde, none of this is a coincidence. Although there is an economic component, political factors are carefully planned to use the migratory crisis as a political weapon. The CDN-Monteverde considers that to avoid more severe consequences, the countries of the area, including the United States, must respond adequately to Daniel Ortega’s strategy, both economically and politically, and do so before it generates irreversible consequences.