There continues to be large numbers of Haitians and Africans who use Nicaragua as a starting point for their journey to the United States.

In recent years, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has witnessed a 180-degree turn in its immigration policy in Nicaragua. Between 2015 and 2017, before the social and political crisis of 2018, the Ortega regime closed the passage of Haitian and African migrants, keeping them stranded for months at the southern border, and currently allowing them to enter en masse to continue their journey to the United States.

La Prensa newspaper verified that the arrival of foreigners of Haitian and African origin into the country is massive. Between 10 and 20 flights enter Augusto C. Sandino International Airport daily from Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Providenciales; Havana, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Hundreds are also arriving via Avianca Airlines from El Salvador. At that country’s airport, the queues of African migrants heading to Managua have a bad reputation, and are now full.

On October 21, according to the list of scheduled flights issued by Airport Management International (EAAI), 15 flights were scheduled to enter from Port-au-Prince, Haiti; 3 from the Dominican Republic; 2 from Havana, Cuba; And 2 from Providenciales Island.

The plane in which these foreigners arrive, according to LA PRENSA’s review of the capacity of aircraft arriving in the country, carries between 50 and 220 people in each unit. Therefore, according to these data, between 1,000 and 5,000 foreigners enter these cities daily.

The route of immigrants to the United States is marked on the map.

La Prensa, in a recent report, verified that Haitian and African migrants arriving in the country already have routes and services they can access on maps to continue their journey to the United States.

Some migrants pay $50 per person to reach Nicaragua’s northern border, thus crossing irregularly into Honduras. Others, with a smaller budget, choose to make the trip on inter-municipal buses, which take them to municipalities bordering the border.

This newspaper recently visited Augusto C. Sandino Airport and found that the facilities were crowded with Haitian foreigners and those arriving from the African continent. Some migrants, who apparently cannot afford a hotel room in the capital, are even sleeping on the airport floor with their minor children.

You may be interested in: This is the route of African, Cuban and Haitian immigrants who use Nicaragua as a “bridge” to get to the United States.

Others choose to wait in the airport parking area or approach transportation companies to try to charter a shuttle service to the northern border.

Some traders at the airport told LA PRENSA that these foreigners consume little and that many of them are looking for ways to find people with whom they had previously made contact.

“They almost don’t understand anything. If they buy something we put the number on it, that way they know how much they have to pay in dollars. “The other thing they always do is ask by photo, they show you a photo of the person they’re looking for, and a lot of them stay to sleep at the airport To kill time and leave in the morning,” said one of the workers at a restaurant. A store located at the airport.

They condemn the “acts” of the dictatorship

A group of opposition organizations denounced, in a joint statement, that the absence of the Ortega dictatorship from the regional summit on migration, held by Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador, was due to collusion with the dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Nicaraguan state institutions benefit from the mass migration of people seeking to reach the United States.

Opponents pointed out that “Ortega has facilitated and deals with thousands of Cubans and other migrants from outside the continent who arrive in Nicaragua to head north.”

Read also: Migrants use Nicaragua to reach the US and avoid Darien

Moreover, they highlighted that precisely for this reason, Nicaraguan dictators are not among the guests of the regional summit on migration, which will be held on October 22 in Palenque, Mexico, with the participation of heads of state from Belize, Colombia. Cuba, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Panama.