{"id":402382,"date":"2026-09-17T10:14:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T10:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/402382\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T10:14:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T10:14:22","slug":"exiled-nicaraguan-journalist-luis-galeano-detained-by-ice-in-florida-ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/402382\/","title":{"rendered":"Exiled Nicaraguan journalist Luis Galeano detained by ICE in Florida | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran journalist Luis Galeano, one of at least 94 Nicaraguans<\/a> whom the Ortega Murillo regime has stripped of citizenship in recent years for opposing the government, has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n

Galeano, who has continued critically reporting on the Sandinista government online through his platform, Caf\u00e9 con voz<\/a>, since shortly after arriving in the US in 2018, has had an asylum application pending for about seven years, according to his wife, Daykel Santamar\u00eda. He also has a work permit and a social security number, she said.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, shortly after beginning his second job driving Lyft on Monday morning in Florida<\/a>, ICE agents pulled him over. As of Wednesday, Galeano was detained at Krome detention center in Miami. He has an immigration court date scheduled for 2 October, Santamar\u00eda said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeporting [Galeano] to Nicaragua would be a death sentence,\u201d said Javier Melendez, a sociologist who has been friends with the journalist for more than 30 years. The Sandinista government also stripped Melendez of his citizenship; he\u2019s now a US citizen, living in Washington DC. The denaturalization order also affected acclaimed novelist Sergio Ram\u00edrez<\/a> and poet and writer Gioconda Belli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ice has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

Melendez called the situation facing his friend \u201ca double trauma \u2013 he escaped from his country because of his work and then the place where he sought refuge detains him due to their domestic politics\u201d.<\/p>\n

Galeano fled Nicaragua in December, 2018, days after police raided 100% Noticias, the outlet where he worked, and issued an order for his arrest. He arrived in Miami shortly thereafter and petitioned for asylum, according to Santamar\u00eda.<\/p>\n

Santamar\u00eda said she didn\u2019t know if her husband was, effectively, a man without a country due to the 2023 measure denaturalizing him as a Nicaraguan.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee had a two hour-plus hearing<\/a> on \u201cConfronting the Totalitarian Ortega-Murillo Regime.\u201d Florida Rep. Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, committee chairperson, opened the hearing by denouncing how Daniel Ortega and Rosa Murillo \u201chave spent years dismantling democracy\u201d, and warned that \u201cthe Administration is paying attention, and Ortega and Murillo should consider themselves warned.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disjunction between the US government locking up a journalist targeted by the Nicaraguan government for reporting on its totalitarian tendencies, while at the same time denouncing those same tendencies is an example of \u201cthe serious and profound contradictions\u201d in the Trump administration when it comes to Nicaragua, said Ana Mar\u00eda M\u00e9ndez Dard\u00f3n, Central America director at the Washington Office on Latin America.<\/a><\/p>\n

Galeano\u2019s detention is one example many of \u201chow due process is missing from the right to asylum\u201d under the Trump administration, she added.<\/p>\n

Salazar issued a statement after <\/a>Galeano\u2019s detention saying: \u201cAmerica must always know the difference between a criminal and a political exile.\u201d Queries from the Guardian to the committee and several of its members were not answered.<\/p>\n

Galeano\u2019s detention has also been denounced by Salazar\u2019s GOP colleague in Florida, Rep. Mario D\u00edaz-Balart, who posted a statement on X saying, \u201cThe United States has long been a beacon of freedom for those persecuted by tyranny. We must uphold that tradition\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The Committee to Protect Journalist<\/a>s and the Inter American Press Association called for Galeano\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

Although Galeano escaped Nicaragua under threat of arrest in late 2018, records of him being targeted for his reporting date at least as far back as 23 Feb., 2011, when Amnesty International issued a bulletin <\/a>titled, \u201cUrgent Action,\u201d warning that his life was in danger after \u201can unknown individual called [him] on his mobile phone and said \u2018You have 72 hours to change your mind about what you\u2019ll publish, otherwise your family won\u2019t see you anymore.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The caller referred to Galeano\u2019s reporting for El Nuevo Diario on government misuse of around $20m between 2004 and 2008.<\/p>\n

Recently, the journalist had been seeing ICE agents in the streets of Miami with increasing alarm while driving Lyft. \u201cHe called me like a week ago, asking if I could help with a new journalism project he had in mind, a morning news program on the region [of Latin America],\u201d said Melendez, who founded Expediente Abierto,<\/a> a think tank on Central America.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to get off the streets, seeing the raids everywhere,\u201d Melendez said.<\/p>\n

Santamar\u00eda, Galeano\u2019s wife, said the two had spoken often about what would happen if one or the either was detained. Plans included calling their lawyer, alerting the media, trying to stay calm. \u201cWe prepared ourselves mentally for this moment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already lived through going into exile, having an order of arrest \u2013 these are situations that make you more mature,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Galeano spoke with his wife several times Wednesday. She described him as calm, telling her, \u201cIf God got me out of Nicaragua, he\u2019ll get me out of here.\u201d She said she has faith the US government will see what she called \u201ca very well-documented asylum case\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran journalist Luis Galeano, one of at least 94 Nicaraguans whom the Ortega Murillo regime has stripped of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-402382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}