The Latin American Report # 512

Nicaraguan co-president Daniel Ortega harshly criticized the anti-immigrant raids being carried out by US authorities under Donald Trump's command. “This is like the persecutions conducted by the Nazis as they sought to hunt down Israelis in the various European countries they occupied,” said Ortega, who also pledged to continue receiving Nicaraguan nationals who are deported. The current co-president—the other co-president is his wife, Rosario Murillo—claimed that in the United States there is “brutal, inhumane persecution that is neither democratic nor Christian, but rather fascist behavior.” “It is savage torture against our Latin American, Central American, Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, and Nicaraguan brothers and sisters,” he added. The four nationalities mentioned benefited for two years from a humanitarian parole program, discontinued by Trump, which allowed the entry of 30,000 individuals every month, as long as they had U.S. sponsors capable of vouching for them.

The beneficiaries could live the "American Dream" for two years, but the 2025 Republican White House interrupted it by stripping them of their parole status. The Supreme Court recently blessed the West Wing's jurisdiction for doing this. From Nicaragua in particular, some 93,000 nationals traveled to the United States thanks to this program, which was part of Biden's two-fold immigration policy. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is reportedly placing barriers to prevent parole-stripped migrants from appealing to other avenues to remain in the United States, such as applying for political asylum. Anwen Hughes, director of Legal Strategy for Refugee Programs at Human Rights First, denounced that USCIS effectively paralyzed the process of applying for permanent residence for a large number of those who entered the country under the so-called CHNV program.

Raids

Kristi Noem's department announced today that it had detained 72 undocumented migrants who were at a nightclub allegedly run by a member of the Los Zetas cartel in Charleston, South Carolina. Last Sunday, with the support of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security also took action against some 100 people with alleged criminal records and transferred the custody of six minors to the appropriate US authorities. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, fugitives and law breakers are on notice: Leave now or ICE will find you and deport you,” said a top official in the DHS. A mayor of Latin American descent in Massachusetts lamented today that Washington is promoting false narratives that attempt to diminish the value of Latin American immigration and create a favorable scenario for increasingly aggressive raids.

“When you want to impose an issue that may not have popular support, you often have to resort to lies because they hide the reality of what is happening,” Brian DePeña, a Dominican who arrived undocumented in the United States, and that now runs the Lawrence government, told the Spanish news agency EFE. It is not a matter of denying the existence of criminals from other countries in the United States, who have “infiltrated” the American nation due to a lack of sound vetting and background checks, but rather of disputing the thesis that all or the vast majority are criminals. “I guarantee you that there are more immigrants who contribute to the nation than those who commit crimes,” DePeña argued. Just see this video.

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