Ronald Cordoba holds a photo of his mother Yadira Cordoba outside his Austin apartment on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2025. Yadira, a Nicaraguan opposition activist, was detained by ICE in San Antonio at a check-in appointment. She has a court date at the end of the month and could be deported.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
For the most part, Ronald Córdoba has tried to remain calm since his mother’s arrest in August by immigration agents.
He’s been steadied by his belief in the U.S. rule of law; but his nervousness, he said, comes from the stakes in his mother’s case. Because of her status as a political dissident in Nicaragua, he fears that deportation to her home country — or even to another Central American nation under a third-country policy — could be deadly.
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“People who are against the government of Nicaragua, they are responded to with gunpowder,” Ronald Córdoba said.
Yadira Córdoba left Nicaragua six years ago, after the death of her son and her subsequent call for justice put her at odds with the country’s authoritarian government, led by married Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Orlando Córdoba, Yadira’s son and Ronald’s younger brother, was shot during a Mother’s Day opposition protest in 2018 in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. The family claims that he was killed by government snipers who fired from the roof of the national baseball stadium. Orlando had gone to the protest with a church group. He was 15.
After her son’s death, Yadira Córdoba became a public face representing the many Nicaraguans who lost family members in anti-government protests and wanted answers. She gave interviews to the press, spoke to international human rights groups and appeared in demonstrations with other mothers of slain individuals. Many of them formed the group Madres de Abril, or “Mothers of April,” in reference to the month that widespread protests began in 2018.
Related: ICE arrests Austin teacher during check-in
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Córdoba is petitioning the U.S. government for political asylum. As of last week, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement has moved to deport her to Honduras, her lawyer, Arno Lemus, told the American-Statesman. The proposal has raised alarm among Nicaraguan exiles, who point to increasing violence by Nicaraguan government operatives against dissidents in other Central American countries. Córdoba previously left Costa Rica for the U.S. out of fear for her safety.
“She left to the U.S. to escape the risk she ran,” said Daniel Carrión, a Nicaraguan human rights lawyer living in exile in Costa Rica who had his citizenship and land confiscated by the Ortega regime. “Yadira does not have a guarantee for her life or her freedom if she’s deported.”
ICE has kept Yadira Córdoba in detention since August 20, when it arrested her during a check-in appointment, an act that Lemus said shows the government’s intent to deport her.
In a statement to the Statesman, ICE declined to elaborate on why it detained Córdoba, saying only that agents first encountered her at the Texas-Mexico border after she entered the country without authorization in 2022 and that she would remain detained until her case is reviewed by a judge. The agency also declined to comment on whether it was seeking to remove her from the country.
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Fleeing fear: Córdoba’s escape from Nicaragua echoes wider exodus
Yadira Córdoba with her now dead son, Orland Córdoba (left), and a grandson in May 2018.
Handout/courtesy of Ronald Córdoba
Ortega has held continuous power since returning to the presidency in 2006. During that time, his government has eroded independent institutions and centralized power, Carrión said. Murillo — a once-prominent poet who became Ortega’s partner when he was a guerilla leader fighting the dictatorship of the Somoza family — formally joined the government as vice president nine years ago. Since then, she has helped further concentrate power in her family’s hands through waves of political purges both inside and outside of the ruling party, the Sandinista Front. After a constitutional amendment this year, she now holds the title of co-president.
Protests erupted in 2018 after government pension cuts and quickly grew into a nationwide movement. The government responded with lethal force, deploying paramilitary and police units, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The organization estimated that at least 355 Nicaraguans were killed during protests in one year.
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In the years that followed, the government imprisoned, killed or deported dissidents, and stripped at least 450 nationals of their citizenship, according to Manuel Orozco, a scholar at the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue and a Nicaraguan whose citizenship was also revoked.
Orozco told the Statesman that the 2018 protests marked a period of “radicalization” for the Nicaraguan government — a clear step away from democratic pretense. Since then, Orozco said, the regime has further isolated itself from the international community and seized economic assets to punish opponents and reward allies.
“Year over year they radicalize to tighten their grip on society,” Orozco said.
The efforts of individuals like Yadira Córdoba and groups like Madres de Abril drew international attention to Nicaragua’s human rights abuses but failed to force political change.
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Yadira and Ronald Córdoba during a march of Nicaraguan exiles in Costa Rica in 2021
Handout/Courtesy of Ronald Córdoba
Since 2018, an estimated 800,000 Nicaraguans — more than 10% of the population — have left the country, according to data Orozco compiled from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Nicaraguan central bank.
Ronald Córdoba said the government began offering his mother money to stay quiet about Orlando’s death. At his job in the government’s Health Ministry, his supervisors offered him promotions under similar terms. When both refused, the offers turned to death threats.
“When she went shopping, when she went to the corner store, she was followed,” Córdoba said. “A neighbor told her she was being surveilled and would be killed.”
Within a year of Orlando’s death, Yadira and Ronald fled to neighboring Costa Rica, where they lived for two years. Due to its relative wealth and political stability, Costa Rica has a large Nicaraguan migrant population. But the two grew fearful there as well, alarmed by reports of assassination attempts and killings of Nicaraguan dissidents. They eventually left for the U.S., settling in Texas in early 2022.
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ICE move to deport Córdoba to Honduras raises concern
For the past three years, the Córdobas have lived quietly in Austin, in a run-down apartment complex inhabited predominantly by other immigrants in the city’s north side. At the time of her detention, Yadira Córdoba worked as a cleaner at an assisted living facility. The two, Ronald Córdoba said, rarely left home except for work.
Lemus said he believes ICE is pursuing deportation to Honduras because it knows her asylum case for Nicaragua and Costa Rica is strong. The next challenge, he said, will be closing the possibility of third-country removals altogether.
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Lemus said the family is equally opposed to deportation to Honduras, citing the Nicaraguan government’s ability to target dissidents throughout Central America. In Honduras, Nicaraguan exiles claim opposition organizer Rodolfo Rojas was assassinated in 2022.
“There is documentation of political opposition individuals who are sought after and chased down in Honduras. There are Nicaragua regime personnel in Honduras,” Lemus said. “She’s not safe in Honduras.”