Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported Monday that communists supporting or belonging to the brutal dictatorship of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega have entered the United States as beneficiaries of the Biden Administration’s humanitarian parole program.
La Prensa’s report is the latest in a series of investigations the newspaper has published detailing the alleged entry of pro-Ortega Nicaraguans into the United States.
Under the administration of leftist President Joe Biden, the Department of Homeland Security implemented a Humanitarian Parole process that allows up to 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan citizens per month to request entry into the United States. Beneficiaries of the program are granted advanced authorization to travel to the United States and are allowed to stay and work for up to two years.
The parole is meant for victims of the repressive leftist regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as those escaping near-anarchic gang violence in Haiti following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021 — not for those perpetuating the repression and violence.
According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), beneficiaries must identify a financial sponsor, an individual with lawful status in the United States. Beneficiaries must also undergo a “clear and robust security vetting” and comply with USCIS’ eligibility criteria.
La Prensa’s report claimed that, although USCIS clearly requires beneficiaries of the Humanitarian Parole program to undergo security vetting, officials and sympathizers of the Ortega regime have nonetheless entered the United States through the program.
On June 30, La Prensa denounced that Nicaraguan citizen Gabriela Alejandra Rayo Castro had arrived in Miami with her husband Juan Alberto Soza Jarquín. Rayo Castro was described in the report to have acted as a witness of the Ortega regime in the trial against Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa.
Álvarez, arrested by the Ortega regime in August, was sentenced in February to 26 years in prison for “treason” and stripped of all citizenship rights. Last week, negotiations between the Vatican and the Ortega regime failed to secure the priest’s release.
Rayo Castro’s husband, Juan Alberto Soza Jarquín, was described as a known pro-Ortega paramilitary fighter who operates in the city of Matagalpa.
Exiled Nicaraguan activist Yader Morazán posted on his Twitter account on June 29:
Let us welcome the paramilitary Juan Alberto Soza Jarquin (of the Famous of Matagalpa), who did not hold back and ran into the arms of the aggressor empire along with his children and wife Gabriela Alejandra Rayo Castro, a witness in the case against Monsignor Rolando Alvarez.
Morazán stated that the husband-and-wife couple is known in Matagalpa to have carried out criminal acts that range from attacks on the local Catholic Church to bearing false witness against dissidents to paramilitary activities.
On Saturday, exiled Nicaraguan journalist Miguel Mendoza denounced that Sandinista activists Flor Vallejos Ávila and José David Gutiérrez Beteta had allegedly recently entered the United States as beneficiaries of the Humanitarian Parole process. Mendoza accused both of them of being “ears,” a term used to describe spies who supply the Ortega regime with pictures or information about dissidents abroad.
Mendoza, the journalist, was among the group of 222 political prisoners and dissidents that the Ortega regime banished from Nicaragua in February.
In a similar report, dated June 29, La Prensa denounced that Nicaraguan police sub commissioner María de Jesús Guzmán Gutiérrez had been granted entry into the United States. The U.S. Department of the Treasury, under the administration of former President Donald Trump, sanctioned the Nicaraguan National Police in March 2020 for the institution’s continued human rights abuses.
Exiled Nicaraguan Catholic priest Edwin Román referred to the growing reports of pro-Ortega Nicaraguans entering the United States through the parole process on June 30, describing the program as “uncontrolled.”
“[U.S. Immigration authorities] should make sure and investigate the behavior of visitors who are entering the U.S. with this benefit,” Román said on his Twitter account. “There are reports of criminal records and participation of these people in terrorist acts on social media.”
Similar to the reports of pro-Ortega officials entering the United States, exiled Cuban citizens have accused members of the Communist Castro regime of abusing the program to enter America. Among those the exile community has identified as suspects are Amalio Alfaro Matos, president of the Criminal Chamber of the People’s Provincial Court of Guantánamo, and Eduardo Velázquez Infante, an alleged member of Cuban State Security and former official of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) communist civilian spy network.
Venezuelan citizens have also denounced for many years that former members of the socialist regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro have stayed in the United States through programs such as the “Temporary” Protected Status granted by the Biden Administration in 2021.
In 2020, Martin Sanchez, a former Maduro regime diplomat, was discovered working at Facebook training the algorithms that automatically “classify” content posted by Facebook users.
In January, a group of 21 U.S. states led by Texas filed a lawsuit in Texas court to challenge the Humanitarian Parole program, claiming it failed to follow proper notice and comment procedures and was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. They also alleged that the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security had “exceeded [their] statutory authority under the program.” After several postponements, the trial is scheduled to take place on August 24.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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