In a sharp rebuke to the Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, the U.S. State Department announced new visa restrictions on Monday targeting more than 100 Nicaraguan officials and their immediate family members. The punitive measure comes in direct response to the death of 73-year-old Brooklyn Rivera, a detained Indigenous political leader who died in government custody late last month, a case that has drawn international condemnation.
Rivera, a respected former congressman and head of Nicaragua’s Miskito Indigenous community, was taken into custody by Ortega’s administration in September 2023. From the day of his arrest, the left-wing authoritarian government never publicly outlined the formal charges against him. It was not until months later, in November 2024, that local press reports confirmed Nicaraguan authorities had informed the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that Rivera’s congressional immunity had been revoked to open an investigation into allegations of serious crimes including treason.
During his detention, Rivera was denied access to both legal representation and his family, a status that led Amnesty International to categorize him as a prisoner of conscience. His declining health became a global point of concern after the Nicaraguan government released photos showing the severely emaciated Rivera connected to a ventilator, prompting the U.S. to formally call for his immediate release. On May 30, Rivera died in custody; the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health announced his death the following day, attributing it to organ failure caused by a bacterial infection stemming from a prior COVID-19 infection. He was buried within 24 hours without any of his family members present, a detail that amplified international outrage.
Speaking from exile in Costa Rica, Rivera’s daughter Tininiska Rivera told AFP the intentionally released photos of her dying father were a deliberate show of force. “They don’t care how they’re perceived abroad, they just want to demonstrate their control and power inside Nicaragua,” she said last week. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a formal call for an independent investigation into Rivera’s death on June 2.
In his official statement announcing the new visa restrictions, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held the ruling Murillo-Ortega regime directly accountable for Rivera’s “horrific death” as a political prisoner. “The United States will not ignore the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship’s responsibility,” Rubio emphasized. This latest action brings the total number of Nicaraguan officials and their family members subject to U.S. visa bans to more than 2,350, all sanctioned for their complicity in enabling the authoritarian rule of Ortega and his wife, Vice President and co-ruler Rosario Murillo. The State Department did not release the names of the 100+ newly targeted individuals.
The current crisis between Washington and Managua is rooted in more than 17 years of Ortega’s rule. An 80-year-old firebrand Marxist who rose to prominence leading a revolution against a U.S.-backed autocrat in the 20th century, Ortega has retained power since 2007 through a series of elections widely decried as unfair and non-democratic by the international community. He has faced consistent accusations of brutal repression to crush all political dissent, a crackdown that has pushed the small, poor Central American nation into deeper international isolation. Nicaragua’s government is already subject to sweeping economic and political sanctions from both the United States and the European Union. Since the crackdown on opposition intensified, thousands of Nicaraguans have fled into exile, hundreds of perceived and actual political opponents have been jailed, and dozens have been stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship.