The ongoing “weaponization” of United States-bound migrants by Nicaragua’s communist dictator Daniel Ortega resulted in profits of over $4 million for the country’s airport authority in the first trimester of 2024, according to a report published by the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa on Thursday.
Since 2022, Ortega has allowed United States-bound migrants from Latin America and other continents such as Africa and Asia to utilize Nicaragua’s main international airport as a stop on the way to the United States.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have opted to pass through Nicaragua to reach United States territory in recent years due to the country’s few visa requirements and its location in Central America, which allows migrants to avoid crossing the highly dangerous Darién Gap jungle trail located between Colombia and Panama.
Experts have accused Ortega of using migrants to force the United States into potential sanctions relief negotiations with his communist regime. The Ortega regime has also been accused of profiting from migrant flows by charging visitors taxes and other fees to use the airport’s facilities.
All of Nicaragua’s airports are operated and managed by the state’s National and International Airport Management Company (EAAI). La Prensa revealed in its latest report that EAAI had been facing a severe financial crisis since 2009, operating at a severe loss since that year. Its fortunes turned in 2022, when it began to turn a profit through Managua’s international airport, when dictator Ortega reportedly began his “weaponization” of migrants against the United States.
Based on documentation reviewed by La Prensa for its report, EAAI earned roughly $4.4 million between January and March 2024, marking a 60 percent increase in revenue when compared to the same time period in 2023. According to La Prensa, Managua’s international airport is the only Nicaraguan airport currently profitable for the Ortega regime.
The Nicaraguan newspaper explains that EAAI’s long financial crisis forced the state airport authority to finance itself through the Nicaraguan Stock Exchange and is thus subject to a debt rating process. Documentation issued by the Central American Risk Rating Society (SCR) reviewed by La Prensa stated that the SCR’s rating council agreed to modify EAAI’s short- and long-term rating “in response to the improvement presented at the cash flow level, given the growth in airport revenues in recent periods, which has allowed the cancellation of obligations.”
SCR’s document, according to La Prensa, also stated that the rating agency will monitor the inflow and outflow of passengers to maintain the revenue levels achieved and allow them to continue amortizing their obligations and making the planned investments.
Additionally, the document reportedly detailed that seven commercial airlines currently operate in Nicaragua alongside seven freighters with different frequencies and 16 charter flight operators. The charter flight operators have seen a noticeable upsurge in usage by United States-bound migrants, with roughly 1,150 charter flights estimated to have landed in Managua between May 2023 and May 2024.
“At the close of the first quarter of 2024, the accumulated flow of international passenger arrivals and departures corresponding to Managua International Airport is 333,147 passengers, which meant an increase of 32 percent over the data for the same period of the previous year,” SCR’s document reportedly said.
“In the first quarter of the year, total accumulated revenues amounted to 395.70 million córdobas [roughly $10.8 million],” La Prensa reported, “a figure that registered a 20 percent annual increase, mainly due to the 23 percent growth in airport revenues, which represent the main source of income.”
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has attempted in the past year to crack down on the use of Nicaragua as a stopgap destination for migrants, especially on the growing use of charter flights to Managua, by imposing sanctions on Nicaraguan-based charter flight airlines and their executives.
A separate report published by La Prensa last week indicated that the Biden administration’s measures have been “insufficient” to reduce the number of U.S.-bound migrants passing through Nicaragua, describing migrant flows as “constant and almost unchanged” compared to 2023. That year, more than 300,000 migrants reportedly used Managua’s international airport on their journey towards the United States.
The Ortega regime approved a nearly $400 million loan from China this year for a project that will see the run-down Punta Huete military airport built in the 1980s renovated into a brand-new international airport.
The $400 million loan to build Nicaragua’s second international airport helped increase the mounting debt that the Ortega regime has accrued with communist China after formally joining the communist government’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) debt trap program in January 2022.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.