Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Wednesday accused U.S. President Donald Trump of committing “horrendous crimes” against migrants by deporting them, separating families, and having sent hundreds of Venezuelans to the mega-prison in El Salvador. Since March, Trump’s administration has expelled 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador, accusing them—without presenting evidence—of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang. The president of that Central American country, Nayib Bukele, has imprisoned them in a gang detention facility.
“These are horrendous crimes,” said the Nicaraguan president during a Labor Day event in Managua’s central plaza, claiming that Trump turned El Salvador into “the prison of immigrants.” Ortega, a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, described as a “crime against humanity” the separation of a two-year-old Venezuelan girl from her mother during their deportation from the United States.
“It is a crime against humanity, just like all the prisoners held everywhere without any legal basis,” he added during his speech, delivered alongside his wife and co-governor, Rosario Murillo.
Ortega, who has ruled since 2007 and spearheaded a recent constitutional reform that dismantled the separation of powers in Nicaragua, criticized Trump for allegedly pursuing anti-immigrant policies “against the rulings of U.S. judicial authorities.” “[Trump] is acting as if, with his arrival in government, all powers in the United States disappeared and he alone holds power and decides what is done and what is not,” said the Nicaraguan president.
The United States sanctioned 250 officials from what it labeled the “dictatorship” of Nicaragua on April 18, marking seven years since massive anti-government protests that resulted in more than 300 deaths, according to United Nations figures. Nicaragua remains under U.S. sanctions due to the repression of those 2018 protests, which Ortega and Murillo claim were an attempted coup sponsored by Washington.
Ortega, a 79-year-old former guerrilla who also ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s, is accused by critics and human rights organizations of establishing a “family dictatorship” alongside his 73-year-old wife, Murillo.
