Report: Venezuela’s State-Owned Airline Will Fly U.S.-Bound Migrants to Nicaragua

An upcoming Caracas-Managua flight route operated by the Venezuelan state-owned Conviasa airline will increase the flow of migrants trying to reach the United States, according to a report published by the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa on Wednesday.

Nicaragua’s communist dictator Daniel Ortega has allowed migrants in recent years to freely pass through the country while on route towards the United States. Experts have suggested that Ortega is seeking to use migration as a “golden opportunity” bargaining tool to negotiate potential sanctions relief with the United States.

Nicaragua presents itself as an alternate route for migrants seeking to reach U.S. territory, as it allows them to avoid passing through the deadly Darien Gap jungle trail located between Colombia and Panama.

Migrants from Haiti, India, and African countries such as Senegal have also begun to reach Nicaragua by air and pass through the country to reach the United States despite the hefty costs incurred by such a long trip in the case of African and Indian migrants. Nicaragua lacks entry visa requirements for most nations. Experts have also denounced that the Ortega regime charges $200 per migrant to use the country’s airports.

Conviasa’s new Venezuela-Nicaragua biweekly Sunday and Tuesday flights will begin operations on Sunday, May 5, according to promotional material published by the airline on social media. The flight route, according to La Prensa, will have a stopover in Havana, Cuba. Since 2022, Cubans have begun to use Nicaragua after the Ortega regime rescinded entry visa requirements for Cuban nationals. President Barack Obama ended policies that allowed Cubans who touch U.S. soil via water to stay in the country legally, creating a new Cuban refugee flow through the southern border:

Presently, Conviasa offers flights from Havana to Managua on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The new route will effectively see daily flights to Nicaragua from the Venezuelan state-owned airline, opening a potential pathway for Venezuelan migrants fleeing the socialist regime to go north without having to cross the Darien Gap. Venezuela’s socialist policies have created what is widely described as the worst migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere, rivaled only by the Syrian and Ukrainian migrant crises currently.

Venezuela maintains limited international connectivity, with direct flights to and from the United States suspended since 2019.

La Prensa reported that the new Caracas-Managua flight connection is being established at a time when the United States is attempting to stop the use of international airlines to bring migrants from Nicaragua.

The efforts, according to official data reviewed by the newspaper, seem to have had little effectiveness.

In January, statistics from the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) showed that Managua’s international airport continued to  “break records” in the number of “tourists” arriving to the country despite no reported local evidence that would suggest an actual increase in tourist activity in the country.

BCN’s statistics show that, between September and October 2023 alone, 241,700 people arrived at the airport, yet only 94,500 left Nicaragua by air, which would suggest that some 147,200 left the country by land.

Between January and February 2024, La Prensa reported, based on BCN statistics, some 130,000 passengers arrived by air, 119,300 of whom left on outbound flights, leaving a difference of about 11,000 migrants who may have opted to continue towards the United States by land.

La Prensa explained that the 11,000-person difference is similar to the one registered in the same period during 2023, where approximately 10,900 passengers did not leave Nicaragua by air.

The Nicaraguan newspaper also noted that Ecuadorian migrants fleeing from their crime- and gang-ridden nation have also begun to use Nicaragua to reach the United States. According to statistical information from the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism (INTUR), 44,221 Ecuadorian citizens passed through the Managua International Airport in 2022, up from 2,215 in 2017, which represents a 1,900 percent increase.

El Salvador, one of the countries used by Indian and African migrants as a stopgap bridge to reach Nicaragua and then the United States, began imposing a $1,000 tariff fee on travelers of said nations starting in October 2023 in an effort to curb the flow of illegal migrants to the United States.

The decision to impose the tariff arose after local authorities detected an increase in the number of inbound, outbound, and connecting Indian and African passengers at the airport compared to previous years.

Former President Donald Trump’s administration sanctioned the Venezuelan state-owned Conviasa airline in 2020 because of the regime’s continued use of the airline to “shuttle corrupt regime officials around the world to fuel support for its anti-democratic efforts.”

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden partially lifted the sanctions in November as part of a flimsy agreement with the Maduro regime for the deportation of Venezuelan migrants. The Maduro regime broke the deportation deal in February and has reportedly refused to repatriate migrants since then.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.