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 Convention’s individual complaint procedure.
Why this page exists
Nicaragua is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. No written arrangement with the United States to receive people has been published, although the sworn account set out below records a Nicaraguan officer describing one. The USCRI tracker states that “There is no publicly available agreement between the United States and Nicaragua as of June 2026.” Source: USCRI tracker, Nicaragua (page last updated October 2026)
Nicaragua is also listed in the Third-Country Removals project, on The Countries page, flagged as a destination country where torture is documented.
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.
Nicaragua ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on 25 February 2009, having signed it on 14 March 2007. It acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its first Optional Protocol on 12 March 1980, and to the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol on 28 March 1980. Sources: UN Treaty Collection, Optional Protocol · Covenant · First Optional Protocol · Refugee Convention · 1967 Protocol
Amnesty International’s report on 2025 records that “The authorities approved a constitutional reform that eliminated the prohibition of torture”, and that “The repeal of Article 36 of the Constitution, which expressly prohibited torture, weakened existing safeguards and increased the risk to the physical integrity of detained individuals.” Human Rights Watch reports that in 2025, “Between February and June, Nicaragua announced or formalized disengagement with the UN Human Rights Council, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Labor Organization, the International Organization for Migration, UNESCO, and the UN Refugee Agency”, and that “No international rights monitoring bodies have been allowed to enter Nicaragua since 2018.” Sources: Amnesty International, Nicaragua 2025 · Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, Nicaragua
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”
The Committee was also concerned about statements by various bodies, including the opinions of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, documenting “incommunicado detention for up to 90 days”. The UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua reported in 2025 that it had “previously concluded that, since April 2018, personnel from the national police, the National Prison Service and pro-government armed groups have systematically committed acts amounting to torture, including rape and other forms of sexual violence”, against “real or perceived opponents who had been arbitrarily arrested.” Sources: CAT/C/NIC/CO/2, paragraph 9 · A/HRC/58/26, paragraph 41
Nicaragua as a third country
Nicaragua has also received a person holding United States protection against return to his own country, and sent him on toward it. On 16 October 2025 ICE flew an Iranian man holding withholding of removal to Iran, granted by an immigration judge on 24 April 2025, from Louisiana to Nicaragua on a plane, in his words, “full of citizens of Nicaragua; I was the only Iranian on the plane.” Before he was sent, he states, he told ICE that he was afraid to go to Nicaragua “because Nicaragua has a very strong diplomatic relationship with Iran”, and the interviewer at his fear screening told him that “the Nicaraguan government was not going to jeopardize its relationship with the United States by deporting me to Iran.” In his sworn declaration he states that a Nicaraguan immigration officer told him “that the Nicaraguan government had already agreed with the U.S. government that I would be sent to Nicaragua so that Nicaragua could send me back to Iran.” He showed the officers his United States withholding order, and “The immigration officers ignored me.” When he refused to sign “a form saying that I was willingly accepting deportation to another country”, “one of the officers who was assigned to me and was with me a lot of the time kicked the chair out from under me, causing me to fall to the floor. Another officer kicked me in the stomach. Because of this abuse, I signed the form.” The officers put cash in front of him, “saying that this was for me to feed myself and make sure I didn’t die on the way to Iran”; he states that he refused it. At about 10 p.m. Nicaraguan officers took him to the gate of a flight to Caracas, Venezuela, by way of Havana, Cuba. In Caracas, “The Nicaraguans had some documents about me that they gave to the Venezuelan officers,” and “The Venezuelan officers put me on a Turkish Airlines flight to Tehran, Iran, with transit in Istanbul, Turkey.” The ticket from Caracas to Tehran was issued on 15 October 2025, the day before he left the United States: “When I saw that, I realized that my deportation to Tehran had been arranged while I was still in ICE custody in the United States.” In Istanbul he “was able to follow the other passengers to passport control and leave the airport,” and he later contacted the United Nations refugee agency. Source: Declaration, D.V.D. v. DHS, D. Mass., Doc. 233-18, paragraphs 5 to 25
The full account is set out in The Record. Sources: Declaration, D.V.D. v. DHS, D. Mass., ECF 233-18, Coalition copy (PDF) · Class opposition to the stay application, Supreme Court No. 26A406, pages 12 and 39 to 40
The declaration was executed in Istanbul on 28 November 2025 and filed on 8 December 2025 in D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, as Exhibit R, Doc. 233-18; the man’s name is withheld in the court’s copy. The class cited it in opposing the government’s application to the Supreme Court for a stay. The government’s application of 24 September 2026 and its reply of 29 September 2026 do not name the declaration, Nicaragua or Iran. The reply answers the part of the opposition that describes it, the class’s recital of harms at pages 37 to 40, in these words: “that recital does not appear to include any example of a class member who was persecuted because of a protected characteristic or tortured in the country to which he was removed. Likewise, respondents note instances of chain refoulement, but neither their merits claims nor the judgment below is based on that concern.” The reply does not dispute the facts the declaration sets out. On 29 September 2026 the Supreme Court stayed the district court’s judgment and granted certiorari; Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson would have denied the stay. The respondents’ brief is due on 16 November 2026 and the case is set for argument on 9 December 2026. Sources: Declaration, Doc. 233-18 (CourtListener) · Class opposition, pages 37 to 40 · Government stay application · Government reply, pages 17 to 18 · Supreme Court docket, No. 26-426
The relationship he feared is on the record. On 13 June 2023 President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran visited Nicaragua; Havana Times, carrying Confidencial, reported that he called relations between the two countries not “customary or traditional,” but “completely strategic,” and that in February 2023 the two governments had “signed a memorandum on cooperation and public consultations in Managua.” Confidencial, analysing Deportation Data Project records, reports that the United States deported 116 foreign nationals to Nicaragua between January 2025 and June 2026, and that “The list also includes one or two nationals from Bangladesh, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, India, Iran, and Mexico”; it adds that “Publicly, Nicaragua does not have a third-country deportation agreement like those in place with the other Central American countries.” Sources: Havana Times, carrying Confidencial, 14 June 2023 · Confidencial, 29 June 2026
Other reports concern removals of Iranians from the United States. The Associated Press reported on 20 August 2026 that emails obtained by the National Iranian American Council show how the U.S. and Iranian governments “worked together to arrange for more than 100 Iranians to be flown back to Iran on three separate immigration flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026,” and that “Iranian officials had some influence over which Iranian immigrants in the U.S. were sent back to their home country”; it reported that the Department of Homeland Security said in July 2026: “These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE.” In Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio, in the District of Columbia, the plaintiff seeks “vacatur of Defendants’ policy of providing the Iranian government information about Iranian asylum seekers that is protected by 8 C.F.R. §§ 208.6 and 236.1(e)” and states that the defendants “denied that the policy exists based solely on a single ICE official’s declaration that DHS does not have an agreement with the government of Iran to provide it with protected information”; on 20 October 2026 the court denied a preliminary injunction. Human Rights First stated on 29 October 2026 that, on reports from attorneys, the administration “may also soon send another deportation flight forcing Iranians back to Iran, the fourth since the start of the Trump administration, and the first since the beginning of the war in February,” and that “The individuals deported have included Christian converts, ethnic minorities, and political dissidents.” The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported on 1 November 2026 that “Iranian authorities executed at least 85 prisoners, including six political prisoners, in October 2026,” and on 4 November 2026 that a 42-year-old political prisoner “has been sentenced to death on charges of ‘corruption on earth’” which, according to his lawyer, was imposed “in connection with his online activities.” Sources: Associated Press via CP24, 20 August 2026 · IALDF v. Rubio, Doc. 40, pages 1 to 2 · IALDF v. Rubio, docket (minute order, 20 October 2026) · Human Rights First, 29 October 2026 · Hengaw, 1 November 2026 · Hengaw, 4 November 2026
Nicaragua is also listed in States Engaging in Refoulement for this conduct.
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.
The court also ordered that he not be removed “to any third country where he is likely to face imprisonment or harm,” and permanently enjoined his removal “to a third country without notice and meaningful opportunity to respond in compliance with the statute and due process in reopened removal proceedings.” On the risk that a third country would send him on to Nicaragua, it said that “on this record the Court does not find sufficiently clear evidence indicating that the Government intends to punish non-citizens by using ‘bridge countries’ to make ‘an end run around’ CAT deferral,” and that in any reopened proceedings “petitioner could raise his arguments about the possibility of being sent onward from a third country to Nicaragua.” Source: Baltodano v. Bondi, W.D. Wash. No. 2:25-cv-01958, Doc. 27, pages 22 to 24
Nicaraguans have since been among the people sent to the Central African Republic. Third Country Deportation Watch records “17 Afghans, 6 Iranians, as well as nationals from Nicaragua, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cuba and others” on the flight of 29 August 2026, adding that “Many of the individuals were granted protections against removal to persecution or torture by a U.S. immigration judge”, and that on 23 October 2026 “nationals of Cuba, Venezuela, Türkiye, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran and Nicaragua were among the 78 third country nationals removed to CAR.” Uno TV reported on 2 September 2026 that a Nicaraguan man removed on 28 August on a flight to the Central African Republic was being held in police custody in Bangui; his family said that he had held protection under the Convention against Torture since 2013, which barred his removal to Nicaragua, and the Department of Homeland Security denied that he held it. Uno TV gives the date of that flight as 28 August and Third Country Deportation Watch as 29 August, and the matter is unresolved. Sources: Third Country Deportation Watch, Central African Republic, updated 26 October 2026 · Uno TV, 2 September 2026
Another Nicaraguan man, Kenis Lopez Gonzalez, was flown to the Central African Republic from Texas on 28 August 2026. An immigration judge had granted him withholding of removal in August 2024, under the protections of the Convention against Torture, which bar his removal to Nicaragua. On 30 October 2026 a federal court in Minnesota ordered the government to facilitate his return, observing that the government’s arguments, if correct, would create “an unreviewable circumvention of legal procedures, as nothing prevents the Central African Republic from removing Lopez to Nicaragua.” The court’s findings record that the aircraft left Texas on the afternoon of 28 August and landed in Bangui after flying for two days, with stops in Ghana and Sierra Leone. The government has appealed. Sources: Lopez Gonzalez v. Mullin, ECF 30, findings 5, 6, 28, 29 and 46, and page 20 · Eighth Circuit, No. 26-3276
Lopez Gonzalez v. Mullin, District of Minnesota, decided by Judge Bryan on 30 October 2026, described above. The court held that he was likely to succeed on his claim that ICE revoked his release without following its own regulations, 8 C.F.R. §§ 241.4 and 241.13, and that his removal did not cure the violation: “Nor is there any legal authority suggesting that a deportation cures a wrongful detention.” The government has appealed. Source: Lopez Gonzalez v. Mullin, ECF 30, pages 23 to 25
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.
Other treaty records: United Nations Treaty Collection, Optional Protocol to the Convention, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, its first Optional Protocol, Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol. United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, A/HRC/58/26. Amnesty International, Nicaragua 2025. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, Nicaragua.
The Iranian man’s case: Declaration, D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-10676 (D. Mass.), Doc. 233-18. Supreme Court, No. 26A406: class opposition to the stay application, government stay application, government reply; docket No. 26-426. Baltodano v. Bondi, Doc. 27 (W.D. Wash. 4 December 2025).
Reporting and monitoring: USCRI tracker. Confidencial, 29 June 2026. Havana Times, 14 June 2023. Third Country Deportation Watch, Central African Republic. Uno TV, 2 September 2026. On Iran: Associated Press, 20 August 2026; Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio, No. 1:26-cv-02375 (D.D.C.), Doc. 40 and docket; Human Rights First, 29 October 2026; Hengaw, 1 November 2026 and 4 November 2026.