A.G. Gancarski
Mobilization continues among a broad group of faith and service groups, attempting to convince the Joe Biden administration to protect 35,000 Nicaraguan immigrants on the brink of deportation.
Ahead of a 3 p.m. community meeting for expatriates from that community at Jose Martí Park in Miami, a group of 270 aligned organizations pleaded with Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to redesignate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nicaragua.
If granted, this would be the first time TPS was granted in 25 years, since recovery from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, as the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the American Friends Service Committee note in a release accompanying the letter.
“The redesignation request comes at a time of great peril,” per the letter, as the “consolidation of judicial, electoral, and presidential power under the (Daniel Ortega) regime, and the brutal repression of any perceived dissenters makes any type of democratic governance impossible.”
Ortega has made global news of late for his decision to exile political opponents of his repressive regime to the United States, in what appears to be an offer they couldn’t refuse. As the Associated Press reported, Roman Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez will serve 26 years in prison for refusing a recent one-way flight.
The letter also invokes seeming realizations from the President and the Secretary of State that action is necessary, noting that Biden said last year it was “not rational” to send Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Venezuelans back to these failed states, and quoting Blinken’s assertion of “strong solidarity with all of those who are seeking to uphold their basic rights – the rights that are enshrined in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and rights unfortunately that continue to be denied by those governments or regimes.”
Brutal violence from the Ortega regime has been aided and abetted by “kangaroo courts” that affirm the systemic repression, the letter notes, denoting the urgency of the moment for those waiting for reprieve there and here alike.
