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Adolfo Román García Ramírez was busy squeezing limes through a strainer into a cup in the kitchen of his new apartment in Silverthorne, Colo. He added some sugar and filled the cup with water to make a limeade drink, explaining that it’s a drink common in Nicaragua – a country he very much still loves, but where he will likely never be able to return.
“I’m a Nicaraguan political exile,” García explained, through an interpreter.
García is one of 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners who were expelled from their country in February and sent to the United States. Four of those ex-prisoners, including García, are now living in the mountains of Colorado’s Summit County, where they’ve been settling into a new life with help from the existing community of Nicaraguan political exiles who came to the area in earlier waves of immigration from Nicaragua, starting in 2018.
García is 55 and built like a square. He moves and speaks with energetic precision, which tracks with his role as a regional leader in Nicaragua’s opposition movement.
He’s watched his country descend into dictatorship since 2018, when President Daniel Ortega responded to nationwide demonstrations against cuts to social security with a severe crackdown on free speech and political opposition.
In the lead up to Nicaragua’s most recent presidential elections in 2021, Ortega jailed his political rivals even before they could launch their presidential campaigns, and then sailed to another term in office in what U.S. President Joe Biden denounced as “a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic.”
Garcia was part of the resistance movement defying the deeply anti-democratic regime, as a regional leader in the opposition group United Blue and White National Unity Group (Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco, or UNAB).
He was arrested for his activities last fall in Managua, after sharing articles on social media that criticized the government. Convicted of treason in what he describes as a sham trial, he was sentenced to 10-years in Nicaragua’s notorious El Chipote prison.
Inside Nicaragua’s most infamous prison
There were other political prisoners in El Chipote, from the elite of the Nicaraguan resistance - including presidential hopefuls, poets, priests and journalists – to the humble foot soldiers of the opposition – students and protesters. Like García, they were all found guilty of treason for exercising their basic human rights and locked away from the world.
“I was there five months under the worst conditions possible for political prisoners,” he said, describing the difficult conditions of his time at El Chipote. “We were beaten, and psychologically tortured,” he said, explaining that the police threatened to arrest his family members if he didn’t cooperate with investigators.
“We weren’t allowed to talk or do anything. Just lay down in the cell. No one could visit us.” The prisoners were completely incommunicado, García said. They had no contact with the outside world, and their families were denied information about their conditions and well being.
International groups, like the United Nations have documented the Nicaraguan government’s broad human rights violations, especially its treatment of political prisoners, like García. In March, a UN special Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua released a report condemning massive human rights violations on the part of the Nicaraguan government.
“These violations and abuses are being perpetrated in a widespread and systematic manner for political reasons constituting the crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment, torture, including sexual violence, deportation and persecution on political grounds,” UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua Chair Jan-Michel Simon said at a press conference in March.
García had no choice but to steel himself to survive 10 years of such treatment in El Chipote prison, and hope for a miracle.
The Flight of the 222
That miracle came late one night in February, when he was unexpectedly roused from his cell along with 221 fellow political prisoners, at El Chipote and other regional prisons around the country.
“They took us out of our cells at 11 p.m., put us in another cell. And then at 2:30 a.m., they put us in a hermetically-sealed bus.”
A U.S. State Department official described the prisoner transport in Soviet-era busses with the windows blacked out so they couldn’t see the outside world. “We didn’t know where we were going,” García said.
By 3 o’clock in the morning, the prisoners arrived at the joint civil-military Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, in Managua. García said the prisoners had no idea why they were there. Some guessed they were being deported, others thought they were being transferred to another prison. Many were afraid. “We were all very confused. We didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to our family members,” García said.
The prisoners were loaded onto a plane, where García was surprised to be welcomed by Americans – U.S. State Department officials - who explained that they had orchestrated the evacuation and they would be leaving Nicaragua on a plane bound for Washington, D.C.
Just a few days before, the Nicaraguan regime had reached out to the American Embassy in Managua and informed the ambassador that they would release the political prisoner if the U.S. would fly them out of the country. A State Department official told KUNC that the prisoner release was a unilateral decision on the part of the Nicaraguan government. The U.S. did not offer anything in return. It was an unprecedented move. And to satisfy the Nicaraguan government, the transport had to be arranged very quickly, and in secret.
“The plane took off and we could see in the sunrise that the military base was completely surrounded by elements of the police,” García said.
Suddenly the 222 political prisoners were free. The State Department official described a chaotic and emotionally charged scene on the airplane, as the prisoners realized their bondage was over. Long lost friends and brothers reunited. Freedom fighters sang the national anthem. But the passengers also began to contemplate all they were forced to leave behind.
“We were profoundly happy, but also very sad because we knew we were leaving a lot behind,” García said. “Above all, our families.”
And before the plane touched down in Washington, DC, Ortega had one last heartache to impose upon his ex-prisoners.
“When we arrived at Dulles Airport, we learned that Daniel Ortega stripped our citizenship,” García said. “And that he declared us traitors of the homeland.” The move was the final blow in the prisoners’ exile, ensuring they would never be able to return to Ortega’s Nicaragua.
Later, they would learn that the regime had also confiscated their property. García lost ownership of his home and his commercial milling business in Managua.
So, the prisoners arrived in America stateless and many now penniless, with all their assets locked away by the Nicaraguan government.
The Nicaraguan diaspora steps up
The United States granted the 222 ex-prisoners a 2-year humanitarian parole, allowing them to live and work in the country. for But federal resources to help have been limited.
To fill that gap, the State Department has leaned on NGO’s and to a greater extent, the Nicaraguan diaspora – members of the resistance who are already resettled abroad. That meant tapping into a network of people like Reyna Esmeralda Hernández Mairena, a Nicaraguan immigrant with ties to the opposition Liberal Party, who lives in Keystone, Colo.
Her Liberal Party contacts told her four of the ex-prisoners – including García – would be coming to Colorado. Hernández didn’t know them, but she knew they’d need a lot of help. She could easily put herself in their shoes because not that long ago, she had been the newcomer leaving behind oppression in Nicaragua for a new life in an unfamiliar country.
Hernández was an opposition leader in Wiwili, a small city in the rural area of northern Nicaragua. Despite election rigging attempts by Ortega loyalists, she managed to get elected mayor of Wiwili in 2017, angering the regime, who sabotaged her administration, cut off municipal funding, murdered aides, seized the city hall and ultimately forced her out of elected office.
Under constant police surveillance, and fearing for her life, Hernández
fled the country in late 2020 and made her way to Summit County, where her sister lived and where she has lived ever since. She applied for asylum in 2021 and is still awaiting a decision.
Even in exile, Hernández is recognized as a force in the opposition Liberal Party. That’s why she was on the receiving end of a call last February.
“People from the Party called me the night before and said the political prisoners were going to be moved,” Hernández said, through an interpreter. “That night I could barely sleep. I was terrified that something was going to happen to them.”
Hernández, along with other Party leaders met them at the airport in Denver and brought them up to Dillon and Silverthorne, where they were welcomed by the large community of Nicaraguan exiles who live there.
“We split up the tasks,” Hernández said, describing the days and weeks after the ex-prisoners arrived in Summit County. “[We] gave them housing and food and helped them apply for work permits.” Hernandez even housed one of them in her apartment for several months.
The group didn’t have a lot of external resources, but Hernández said they felt compelled to help out of a sense of solidarity. “Because they’re our Nicaraguan brothers,” she said. “Even if we didn’t know who they are, they’re all our Nicaraguan brothers.”
Summit County’s strong Nicaraguan exile community
No one seems to have a good handle on the size of Summit County’s Nicaraguan exile community. County officials and immigrant advocacy groups guessed at least 200 to 500 individuals but acknowledged they don’t really have the full picture.
For her part, Hernández says she thinks her community is at least 2,000 strong – and she says many of them come from her home turf of Wiwili. She likes to call Summit County Pequeña Wiwili, or “Little Wiwili,” and the data appears to back her up.
Since 2018, more and more Nicaraguan immigrants have been fleeing to the US to escape political persecution, and Colorado has become an increasingly popular destination for them. According to immigration court data compiled by Syracuse University, nearly 6,000 Nicaraguan immigrants filed cases in Colorado between 2018 and 2022, the last year for which data is available. About 1,400 of those cases were filed by people living in Summit County, far more than anywhere else in the state.
County officials told KUNC that the area is popular among immigrants because good-paying jobs in hospitality and construction are abundant there. But the growing Nicaraguan community there also simply follows the familiar pattern of chain migration. Once a few people from a particular region get settled in a new home, new arrivals tend to be attracted to a familiar element.
The large community of Nicaraguan political exiles in Summit County meant that the four ex-political prisoners would be surrounded by people with a unique understanding of what they had been through, how to welcome them and what type of help they would need to get settled.
Getting Settled
Four months later, García is starting to feel settled. “At first I felt totally lost and we had to rely on other Nicaraguans, like Reyna [Hernández], who are basically our sponsors. They would take us around and help us,” he said. “Now I'm doing things on my own. I’ve learned how to do my own processes, opening bank accounts, requesting my documents and gradually becoming part of the community here.”
García is in the process of applying for asylum, and after months in prison, he’s focused on regaining his health. While he’s found odd jobs, working in dry cleaning, construction and house cleaning, he’s looking for steady work, which has been a challenge.
“At home, I was a businessman. I was a manager. I was an electrician. I worked in construction. I did computer stuff,” he said. “But here, our studies aren’t recognized. In any job, we have to start from scratch. Frankly, I would do any job. We don't want to be a burden on anybody.”
Finding a good job would help García said is the hardest part of living in exile: being separated from his family. "My daughters, who I love so much, are not with me," he said. "They're scattered in three different places because the situation is getting worse daily." His older daughters have faced harassment by the police, and one has had to flee the country and is now living in Spain.
He doesn't yet have the means to sponsor his daughters, but he hopes that will change. "That warmth of family is what I really miss," he said.
With the help of Summit County leaders and nonprofit groups, he was able to move into the apartment in Silverthorne. He shares the home with another former political prisoner, who declined to speak with KUNC, fearing repercussions for family still in Nicaragua.
García is eager to share his own story. “I want people in the local community to know what is happening around them and to have empathy for our experience,” he said.
As for the other ex-prisoners from the plane, they all keep in touch. “We have a chat group on WhatsApp for all of us who are scattered around the country. We mostly talk about the daily conditions, mostly economic troubles people are having,” García said, adding that hearing about some of the difficulties faced by those who settled elsewhere has made him feel blessed to be in Colorado. “People here see us in a more positive light, and they've helped us” he said.
Congress has the power to grant all the ex-prisoners refugee status, no matter which state they now call home, a move that would open up vastly more resources to help them get settled, but that hasn’t happened yet.
In response to KUNC’s inquiry on the matter, Senator John Hickenlooper’s office would not comment on the question of granting refugee status to the ex-prisoners. In an email, his office responded that the senator “has always sought to make Colorado a safe haven for those fleeing political persecution,” and said they were doing what was in their power to assist them.
With or without refugee status, García said he is deeply thankful for his freedom. He could easily still be lying in a cold, dark jail cell. Instead, he’s here in Colorado, mixing up that cup of fresh limonada.
He stirred the glass and added the final touch - a hefty pinch of salt - because, he said, it’s the way they do it back home, in Nicaragua.
