According to flight data and specialists in the area, around 260 charter planes carrying migrants from Haiti are thought to have landed in Nicaragua in recent months, contributing to an unprecedented wave of migration by individuals seeking to reach the United States.
The migrant crisis has left the Biden administration and Latin American leaders searching for answers, and analysts claim that regimes such as Nicaragua are using the crisis as leverage to pressure the US into making concessions in the face of intensifying sanctions.
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Manuel Orozco, director of the migration, remittances, and development program at the Inter-American Dialogue stated, “The Ortega government knows they have few important policy tools at hand to confront the United States, … so they have armed migration as a way to attack.” He noted, “This is definitely a concrete example of weaponizing migration as a foreign policy.”
Due to the fact that Nicaragua is one of the few countries where many of them may enter without a visa, it has long been utilized as a migratory hub for individuals escaping unstable countries in the Caribbean like Cuba and Haiti as well as distant nations like Sudan.
By late last year, these flights from Cuba were becoming more popular as a result of a historic exodus from the country. The Orozco stated in August that the flights were made possible by the Nicaraguan government’s approval of charter airlines.
Although the flights are not on authorized airways, Orozco has examined flight monitoring data and found 268 charter flights from Haiti to Nicaragua since the beginning of August.
According to Orozco’s statistics, up to 31,000 passengers have been transported out of Haiti by charter flights, which translates to about 60% of all Haitians landing at the US border. Roughly 172 aircraft transported 17,000 passengers from Cuba to Nicaragua during that time.
Speaking with the media, three Haitian migrants on the charter planes claimed to have paid thousands of dollars to flee the poorest nation in the hemisphere in the hopes of arriving in the United States. According to Orozco, most seats cost between $3,000 and $5,000 each.
This past weekend, things reached a boiling point when the local press revealed that 27 charter aircraft from Haiti had touched down in Nicaragua in less than 48 hours. Speaking on behalf of the opposition organization Platform for Democratic Unity, Enrique Martínez stated that the increasing number of flights occurs at a critical juncture for Ortega’s administration.
The Biden administration recently negotiated a lifting of sanctions on Venezuela’s government, which have intensified the country’s economic crisis, in exchange for pledges to hold fair elections, since a significant part of individuals coming at the US border are Venezuelans.
According to Martínez, Ortega could be aiming for a similar result.
Due to Ortega’s increasing repression, the US government and other European countries have increased the sanctions against him and his administration in recent years. In an attempt to quell opposition, his administration has forced hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans to migrate overseas and closed thousands of colleges and non-governmental organizations.
Martinez noted, “Ortega is going to use this migration issue to say to the United States that we’re the ones in control.” He noted, “And if they want to stop this, they’re going to have to negotiate.”
