Nicaraguan Priest Warns of Danger Facing Deportees| National Catholic Register

Father Marcos Somarriba fled Nicaragua as a teenager during the Sandinista revolution and was granted political asylum in the United States.

Decades later, as a Catholic priest in Miami, he is dismayed as the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo tightens its grip on his countrymen — and the Trump administration announces plans to deport thousands of his fellow Nicaraguans who have been in this country for decades.

“My people, the Nicaraguan people, are dumbfounded. They don’t know where to go, what to do, and I think the regime is not going to be open to this,” the priest told the Register. 

“They disappear people; they put people in jail; they exile people and don’t let them come back into the country,” he said.

After a devastating hurricane tore through Central America in 1998, killing 3,800, and leaving over half a million people homeless, the United States opened its doors to residents of Nicaragua and Honduras, granting them Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The designation protected them from deportation and allowed them to work but did not put them on a path to citizenship.

Now, many of those foreign nationals — who have built lives, raised families and started businesses in the U.S. — face deportation under the president of Donald Trump, who has cracked down on illegal immigration and expanded the deportation of migrants.  

On July 7, the Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of TPS for these individuals, effective on Sept. 25, citing improved conditions in their home countries.

“Temporary Protected Status was never meant to last a quarter of a century,” said a DHS spokesperson. “The impacts of a natural disaster impacting Nicaragua in 1999 no longer exist. The environmental situation has improved enough that it is safe enough for Nicaraguan citizens to return home. This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that TPS remains temporary.”

A federal judge last week, however, ruled against the Trump administration, granting these longtime residents of the U.S. a temporary reprieve. Their protection from deportation is now set to expire on Nov. 18, 2025.

Father Somarriba, pastor of St. Agatha Catholic Church in Miami, home to many members of the Nicaraguan diaspora, disagrees with that assessment that conditions have improved in Nicaragua. 

He told the Register that under the dictatorship of Ortega and his wife Murillo, conditions are much worse than when he left 45 years ago.

“It’s horrible how they are persecuting their own people. This is unheard and unseen,” he said. “I’ve never seen this happen in my country like it is taking place right now.”

The human-rights violations of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship are well-documented. The U.N. Human Rights Council in February 2025, warned that Nicaragua’s government has committed “severe human-rights violations,” eliminated independent institutions and silenced opposition while establishing an authoritarian regime. 

The most recent report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called conditions in Nicaragua “abysmal,” noting that the dictatorship has systematically persecuted the Catholic Church, arbitrarily arresting bishops and priests and employing tactics to intimidate worshippers from practicing their faith.

Since 2018, the regime has cancelled the legal status of more than 5,400 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among them many Christian and Catholic entities. The government has also ordered the dissolution of religious orders, include Mother’s Teresa’s Sisters of Charity, and shut down Catholic radio stations and other media outlets. 

Martha Patricia Molina, a human-rights lawyer and author of Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church, works with Nicaraguans in the World Texas, supporting migrants, including priests and seminarians in exile in the United States. 

“The vast majority of us would like to be in our homeland, but the only answer the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship has for us is prison, the cemetery or exile,” she told the Register. 

Catholics, she said, cannot freely practice their faith in Nicaragua. She said that during Mass everyone is monitored, and police photograph and take videos of attendees. Religious processions are not allowed.

“They can only practice their faith inside churches. They know they could be imprisoned if they leave,” she said.  

Amid the intensifying crackdown on the Church in Nicaragua, the Biden administration intervened diplomatically in 2023. 

After negotiations with the Ortega regime, 222 political prisoners — including six Catholic priests and two seminarians — were removed from Nicaraguan’s prisons in the middle of the night and placed on a plane to the United States.

Although they escaped Nicaragua to arrive safely in the U.S., their immigration status — and their future — remains uncertain, much like the Nicaraguans who are facing the loss of TPS protection.

John Feeley, former U.S. ambassador and career diplomat, told the Register that because the U.S. embassy in Nicaragua only had a week to coordinate the arrangement, the process was rushed. The deported priests and other political prisoners were only granted temporary humanitarian parole without work permits or political asylum.

“These are people who were jailed by a dictatorial regime. So there’s no clearer prima facie evidence of a legitimate asylum claim,” Feeley said. 

Facing long backlogs in the processing of asylum claims in the U.S., Feeley said, some of them have been forced to seek citizenship in other countries.

“I happen to know several of them, and they are choosing to voluntarily leave the United States,” Feeley said. 

“They can’t go back to Nicaragua, but they’re going to places where they might be able to get treated with the basic human dignity that political asylum requires, and that the United States used to observe, but under the Trump administration has decided we will not observe,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.

In response to an inquiry from the Register, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, released the following statement:

“We condemn the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship’s egregious and ongoing violations of freedom of religion, belief and expression, and the oppression and reprisals that drove so many Nicaraguans — including clergy — to illegal immigration, exile and expulsion from Nicaragua. While DHS manages U.S. immigration processes and can answer questions regarding parole and adjustment of status, our position is clear: The United States will continue to press for accountability for these abuses.” 

DHS did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication. 

St. Agatha Catholic Church in Miami, where Father Somarriba serves as pastor, is closely connected to the plight of the Nicaraguan political exiles that were on that plane from Managua. 

The two seminarians on board are now continuing their formation at nearby St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida. Bishop Silvio José Báez Ortega, the auxiliary bishop of Managua who was forced into exile in 2019, teaches at the seminary and celebrates a weekly Mass at St. Agatha’s.

“They should have been granted political asylum immediately. They know that we’re coming from jail innocently, unjustly accused and condemned,” Father Somarriba said. “After all, the U.S. welcomed them and brought them here as part of an agreement with the Nicaraguan government.”

Father Somarriba is concerned about what might happen to anyone deported to Nicaragua, including those who have fled the country more recently.

He noted that Ortega last month gave a speech in which he called for his followers to spy on their neighbors.

“So there’s no room left for the terrorists, the conspirators, the traitors, because they will know that as soon as they’re discovered, they’ll be captured and prosecuted,” Ortega said.

The speech, according to Father Somarriba, signals an intensification of the regime’s crackdown on opposition: “If you’re not with them, you’re dead, you’re exiled, or you go to jail. And this is the fear that you have among the people in Nicaragua.”