Nicaragua’s communist regime has been “secretly” receiving U.S. deportation flights of Nicaraguan nationals since President Donald Trump took office in January, the newspaper Confidencial reported on Friday.
Confidencial, a Nicaraguan newspaper operating in exile after communist dictator Daniel Ortega seized its headquarters in December 2018, stated in its report that five U.S. deportation flights carrying an unspecified number of Nicaraguans have so far arrived in Managua’s international airport since President Trump took office on January 20.
The newspaper pointed out that the Ortega regime suspended the publication of press releases with figures on the arrival of deportees in mid-2019. As a result, the newspaper explained that it obtained the information through online platforms that record flights in real time, including those of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Air Operations.
According to information reviewed by Confidencial obtained from real-time flight tracking data platforms such as FlightAware and Avionio, all flights have used the identifier “G66194 from Global X.” The latest flight departed from the Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana on Thursday, March 20, and arrived in Managua at noon.
“Four of the five flights departed from Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana and one from Houston, Texas. All were operated by Global X Airlines (Global Crossing), one of six airlines that are subcontracted by Classic Air Charters, a company that has contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” the report read.
In its detailed breakdown of the flights, Confidencial stated that the first of the flights departed from Alexandria, Louisiana, on Thursday, January 23. The second one departed from Louisiana on February 6, the third departed from Houston, Texas, on February 20, the fourth flight departed from Louisiana on March 6, and the fifth also left from Louisiana on March 20.
All flights were conducted with the use of an Airbus A320, an aircraft with a maximum capacity of 180 passengers. Confidencial pointed out that regime authorities have kept secret the number of deportees who arrived in Nicaragua in the past two months along with their identities.
“However, January 27, 2025 was the last time the [Nicaraguan Interior Ministry] MINT indicated that they had attended to ‘repatriated nationals from Costa Rica, Mexico, and the United States,’” the report detailed. “The following four flights with deportees from the U.S. that landed in Nicaragua have received them in absolute silence.”
Confidencial stated that the planes do not appear in the logs of Nicaragua’s National and International Airports Administration Company (EAAI), but their arrival nevertheless was confirmed by the newspaper upon reviewing air traffic tracking platforms as well as photos and videos published by Nicaraguan aviation enthusiasts on their social media accounts.
The arrival of the flights at the airport, Confidencial detailed, is handled by both the Nicaraguan Police’s Directorate of Airport Protection and Security (Dipsa) and the Army through the Airport Protection and Security Detachment (Depsa), alongside migration officers. The airplanes are sent to a “remote ramp” used for private flights so that “they have no contact with passengers departing and arriving at the terminal.”
The Nicaraguan newspaper pointed out that dictator Daniel Ortega is “one of the few” regional heads of state who has not publicly complained about President Donald Trump’s deportation policies and had simply called for “respect for the human rights of migrants” during an early February gathering of the ALBA-TCP regional far-left coalition.
“They are treating them as criminals, and accusing them of being criminals, drug traffickers, without any proof, without any trial, and without any sentence that says that these citizens have committed any crime. They simply disqualify them in the most brutal way, and kick them out of that territory,” Ortega reportedly said at the time.
In recent years, Ortega implemented a series of policies to “weaponize” migration against the United States, allowing hundreds of U.S.-bound migrants to pass through Nicaragua towards the U.S. southern border. Experts denounced Ortega’s “weaponization” of migrants aimed to pressure the United States to engage in talks towards easing or outright lifting sanctions against his communist regime.
During his January confirmation hearing in Congress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Nicaragua “directly contributed” to the migrant crisis at the U.S. southern border and explained that Nicaragua “has become the entry point for people from all over the world because they enter without any visa, they charge you a thousand dollars or whatever is in force today, and from there you enter the migratory route and enter the United States.”
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