GUATEMALA CITY (AP) In a matter of hours, Sergio Mena’s life was over.
The rural activist left Nicaragua in 2018, along with thousands of other demonstrators, after years of opposing President Daniel Ortega’s assault on dissent.
In 2021, Mena returned from exile in neighboring Costa Rica to resume his protests, only to be sent to a prison where he claimed that inmates were shocked with electricity and hung by their feet.
Mena, 40, claimed that from the time we arrived until the very last day, we were constantly subjected to physical and psychological torment.
Although Mena is currently living in exile in Guatemala, he is still far from being free. He was removed of his citizenship, his residence, and his government pensions upon his release, along with hundreds of other religious leaders, students, activists, dissidents, and journalists.
According to the UN, they are among the 4.4 million stateless individuals who struggle to obtain healthcare, education, and employment, as well as to open bank accounts or get married without proper identification.
According to Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough, executive director of United Stateless, a U.S.-based group that supports the stateless, being stateless is like being tortured. Even when you are physically present as a human, you simply cease to exist legally.
Unfree but free
Mena and 134 other detainees were carried into the plane that transported them to Guatemala in September by Ortega’s regime. They joined 317 other people who the government has declared to be enemies and unworthy of having a legitimate Nicaraguan identity.
More than 24 Nicaraguan exiles who have lost their citizenship and are attempting to find their way back were interviewed by the Associated Press. As they work to recuperate from the physical and psychological trauma they endured in Nicaragua, they are dispersed throughout the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Spain in limbo.
An AP request for comment was not answered by the Ortega administration.
The suffering caused by statelessness
Most stateless persons in the world are born to refugees and migrants in nations that do not grant birthright citizenship, which is the right to citizenship if you are born on a nation’s soil.
It’s difficult for many Nicaraguans to make ends meet on their own. Others withdraw out of concern that they would one day be targeted by the Nicaraguan government. Numerous others shudder as they witness their lives being destroyed. President-elect Donald Trump’s pledges to crack down on immigration and asylum have increased uncertainty for individuals who are stuck in the United States or are seeking shelter there.
Increased repression
Early last year, Ortega’s administration started depriving citizens of their citizenship.
Mena, a member of a rural activist movement, claimed to have been imprisoned during the crackdown. He disputes the government’s allegations that he was involved in organized crime and drug trafficking.
The administration started transporting inmates to the United States and, most recently, Guatemala in February 2023, in violation of international law. Citizenship was revoked for other exiles who had never been imprisoned.
Torment that transcends national boundaries
Although the Nicaraguan government has not provided an explanation for the release of Mena and other prisoners, experts have conjectured that it did so in order to avoid international condemnation and the associated expenditures while still keeping hold of its opponents.
Mena, who resides in a hotel in Guatemala City, looks through pictures of a dilapidated jail, food scraps, and his battered and bruised body, all of which are permanent reminders of his more than two years behind bars. His existence is characterized by a persistent fear.
With tears in his eyes, he stated, “The Nicaraguan government’s tentacles still reach here.”
Mena believes the U.S. government will give him asylum, and the Biden administration has provided the Nicaraguans temporary safeguards. However, under Trump, these protections are likely to be eliminated or drastically curtailed. Some of the stateless refugees have been given nationality by the Spanish government, but few lack the means to start afresh in Spain or are unsure of how to proceed.
The struggle of the stateless
54-year-old Allan Bermudez taught at a Nicaraguan institution. After Ortega designated colleges as gathering places for antigovernment demonstrations, he was accused of plotting against the government and put in jail.
He was one of 222 inmates who were placed onto a plane bound for the United States in February 2023 without knowing their destination. Although the U.S. government gave Bermudez and others some short-term assistance, including $400, a new phone, a few days at a hotel, and restricted access to aid from a number of non-governmental organizations, the assistance has since stopped.
Bermudez, who holds several advanced degrees, is currently having trouble finding work at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the outskirts of Salisbury, Maryland.
He has no health care, rents a small room, and has post-traumatic stress disorder and severe cardiac issues.
He said, “I haven’t bought my medication because I won’t have anything to eat if I do.”
This year, his mother suffered a stroke back in Nicaragua. Sending money home has been difficult for him. His wife and daughter are also back home, and he suffers from sadness and anxiety.
After residing in the United States on humanitarian parole provided by the Biden administration, he submitted an asylum application in February but claimed not to have received a response. He has devoted all of his dreams to establishing a life in the United States, and he is unsure of what he will do in the event that asylum is denied.
“I have my hands tied, so I can’t leave,” he stated. I can only ask God to assist me.
Upended lives
Hundreds of thousands have left Nicaragua, just like Bermudez. Thousands of civil society organizations have been shuttered, their assets seized as the government seeks to silence any dissent.
While many of the Nicaraguan exiles hope to one day return to their country, 82-year-old Moises Hassan has given up hope as he hides away in a town in the mountains of Costa Rica.
Hassan was once a guerrilla fighter against the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship and then, alongside Ortega, a member of the junta that succeeded it. He built a family and a home with thousands of books, and planned to live out the rest of his days there.
He was elected mayor of the capital, Managua, but saw his life and hopes sour when he began to criticize Ortega s anti-democratic moves. In 2021, he left the nation. While on a trip to visit his daughter he heard the government was detaining critics, and knew they would come for him.
It was no surprise when his name appeared on a list of people who were stripped of their citizenship and home and called traitors.
The message is Don t think that just because you re out of the country that you re out of our reach, he said.
But he said that with his pension seized along with his belongings, it has been a shock to depend on money from his children.
He and his wife remain in their corner of Costa Rica, too scared to even go to the capital, where they worry Ortega s agents could track them down.
I feel like I m under house arrest, he said, cradling his worn, now useless Nicaraguan passport. I m a prisoner in my own home.
Janetsky reported from Costa Rica and Mexico City. Gabriela Selser contributed from Mexico City.
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