Nicaragua has been accused of ‘arming’ US-bound Haitian migrants to win US concessions amid tightening sanctions.
More than 260 charter flights carrying migrants from Haiti have landed in Nicaragua in recent months, according to flight data and experts in the area.
The flow of migrants has the Biden administration and Latin American leaders looking for solutions.
Experts say the Nicaraguan government, led by President Daniel Ortega, is using the migrants as a way to attack the US.
Manuel Orozco, director of the migration, remittances and development program at the Inter-American Dialogue, said: “This is absolutely a concrete example of the weaponization of migration as foreign policy.”
Haitian migrants wade across the Tuquesa River after trekking through the Darien Gap in Bajo Chiquito, Panama, Wednesday, October 4, 2023
A U.S. Border Patrol agent checks the identification of immigrants as they wait in line for processing after crossing from Mexico in Yuma, Ariz., May 21, 2022
He added: “The Ortega government knows it has few major policy tools to counter the United States, so they have armed migration as a way to attack.
Nicaragua has long been used as a springboard for people fleeing troubled countries like Cuba and Mauritania in Africa because it is one of the few countries where many of them do not require a visa to enter.
Such flights from Cuba were already on the rise late last year, amid a historic exodus from the island.
In August, Orozco said the Nicaraguan government was allowing charter companies to operate the flights.
The trips are not on official air routes, but flight tracking data analyzed by Orozco and The Associated Press shows that 268 of the charter flights have gone from Haiti to Nicaragua since the beginning of August.
The charter companies have flown as many as 31,000 people out of Haiti, representing nearly 60 percent of Haitians arriving at the U.S. border, Orozco’s data shows.
During the same period, some 172 flights transported 17,000 people from Cuba to Nicaragua.
The Associated Press spoke to three Haitian migrants aboard the charter flights, who said they shelled out thousands of dollars to leave the poorest country in the hemisphere in hopes of reaching the United States.
Orozco said most tickets cost between $3,000 and $5,000 per seat.
Migrants with children cross Rio Bravo from Mexico to the US on May 21, 2021 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Haitian migrants hoping to seek asylum in the US wait to register their names on a list created by a religious organization in Reynosa, Mexico, December 21, 2022
Things came to a head this weekend, when local media reported that 27 charter flights from Haiti had landed in Nicaragua in 48 hours.
Enrique Martínez, spokesman for the group Platform for Democratic Unity, said the number of flights comes at a strategic time for Ortega’s government.
Martinez said: “Ortega is going to use this migration issue to say to the United States that we are the ones in control.
“And if they want to stop this, they’re going to have to negotiate.”
The Biden administration recently negotiated an easing of sanctions from the Venezuelan government in exchange for promises to hold democratic elections.
Stéphanie Armand, a spokesperson for Sunrise Airways, which records show operated at least 15 flights in the past week, said Sunrise does not sell tickets to Nicaragua.
According to Armand, the airline is contracted by ‘third parties’ to operate the flights. She did not want to elaborate on who the third parties were.
Asked whether the airline’s services are used by human smugglers to carry out migration to the US, Armand said the company checks passengers’ documents before boarding.
She wrote: ‘As an airline and aircraft operator, we have no information about the intentions of the passengers we carry.
“If passengers meet the country’s entry requirements and are admitted, it is up to the authorities, and not the airlines, to check their status.”