Nicaragua Helping Fuel Migrant Crisis by 'Weaponizing' Haitian Migrants as Leverage Against US

The US is getting overwhelmed by migrants, and it seems that Daniel Ortega's government in Nicaragua is making things worse as he weaponizes planes full of Haitian migrants who are desperate enough to leave their gang-ravaged country in search of a better life.

Nicaragua has long been a transit point for migrants seeking to go to the US-Mexico border and plead for asylum. Unlike the governments of other countries, however, Daniel Ortega is not cooperating with the US. The infamous dictator is instead weaponizing these migrants as leverage.

The Central American country, whose own citizens have fled oppression from his government, has little to no leverage against the US government, which has imposed sanctions against Nicaragua over its many human rights abuses. With the country now serving as a transit point for many of these migrants, particularly from Haiti, Ortega finally has something to use against the US.

And it is not just Haitian migrants who have been using Nicaragua as a springboard to the US, but also countries like Cuba in the Caribbean and Mauritania in Africa. This flow of migrants has many Latin American leaders and Joe Biden himself scrambling for solutions on how to solve this migrant crisis.

"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," Manuel Orozco, director of the migration, remittances and development program at the Inter-American Dialogue, told the Associated Press. "This is definitely a concrete example of weaponizing migration as a foreign policy."

Over 260 charter flights between Haiti and Nicaragua have happened over the last few months. It has been adding to the massive number of migrants fleeing other countries, such as Venezuela. Flights from Cuba have also been gaining steam.

Nicaragua Received 27 Flights Full of Haitian Migrants in Just 2 Days

Before last weekend's migrant crisis meeting hosted by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, it was revealed that 27 flights from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, arrived in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, in the span of just two days. These flights all carried Haitian migrants on their way to the US-Mexico border.

According to Confidencial, this has led many in the exiled Nicaraguan opposition to accuse Ortega of facilitating and profiting from irregular migration as part of a migration-for-profit scheme.

The opposition organizations released a statement that stated, "The Dictatorship in Nicaragua Profits from Foreign Migrants" and added that Ortega "has already turned facilitating Cuban migration into a business, creating mechanisms for hundreds of Cubans to arrive in Nicaragua daily by air, paying exorbitant prices for their plane tickets. This is a profitable business for both the Cuban and Nicaraguan regimes."

Nicaragua Continues Its Feud With the Roman Catholic Church

Nicaragua, considered the poorest country in Central America, is also feuding with the Roman Catholic Church after several parishes helped out anti-government protesters in 2018.

According to Al Jazeera News, the authoritarian regime has arrested several Catholic priests as part of its ongoing crackdown on the Catholic Church, which has earned the ire of Pope Francis. Now, the government has released 12 of these priests and sent them to the Vatican after some negotiations.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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