A United States immigration judge has found that a man was tortured by the government of Nicaragua and faces a more than fifty per cent likelihood of being tortured again if returned. Nicaragua signed the Convention against Torture on 15 April 1985 and ratified it on 5 July 2005. It has not accepted the individual complaint procedure.
Why this page exists
Nicaragua is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. It has no arrangement with the United States to receive people and does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project.
What Nicaragua has accepted
The depositary record shows signature on 15 April 1985 and ratification on 5 July 2005, twenty years later. Nicaragua has made no declaration under article 22, so an individual cannot complain about it to the Committee against Torture.
What the Committee against Torture found
The Committee adopted concluding observations on Nicaragua on 18 November 2022, at its seventy-fifth session. Under the heading on impunity, at paragraph 19, the Committee said it was gravely concerned about:
“The numerous cases of torture and ill-treatment in prisons and police stations documented by various international mechanisms and NGOs during the period under review, as well as the lack of information on the steps taken by the authorities in follow-up, which call into question the State party’s assertion in its submission of 29 June 2022 that torture is not a custom of the country”
What the register records
Baltodano v. Bondi, Western District of Washington, decided in two stages by Judge Lasnik on 7 November and 4 December 2025. On 5 March 2025 an immigration judge granted Alejandro Francisco Baltodano deferral of removal under the Convention against Torture. The court sets out the finding:
“has established that he experienced past torture at the hands of the Nicaraguan government and that he faces a more than fifty percent likelihood of experiencing torture at the hands of the Nicaraguan government or with its acquiescence upon return.”
The court records that he had in the past engaged in political activism against the government of President Daniel Ortega. The relief granted was deferral of removal, not withholding. The two are different, and the difference is set out on The laws that protect people from torture.
The government then sought to remove him to a third country. On 4 December 2025 the court granted his habeas petition, ordered release, and held that third-country removal paired with imprisonment is intended to be punitive and violates due process. The entry is in the register of court decisions.
Sources
Treaty status: United Nations Treaty Collection, depositary record for the Convention against Torture, chapter IV-9, read 14 September 2026.
Committee against Torture, concluding observations on the second periodic report of Nicaragua, CAT/C/NIC/CO/2, adopted 18 November 2022: docs.un.org.