The United States secured the release of 135 political prisoners in Nicaragua on humanitarian grounds, the White House announced Thursday.
The deal includes 13 people affiliated with the Texas-based Mountain Gateway ministry, along with other Catholic laypeople, students and others whom, according to the White House, the Nicaraguan leaders “consider a threat to their authoritarian rule.”
The freed Nicaraguan citizens will be released to Guatemala, where they will go through the process of applying for citizenship in the United States or elsewhere.
“No one should be put in jail for peacefully exercising their fundamental rights of free expression, association, and practicing their religion,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.
The administration thanked Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo for welcoming the Nicaraguans and “for his continued leadership across the region in addressing humanitarian issues and championing democratic freedom.”
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have overseen a crackdown on opposition voices, which has only intensified since 2018, when popular protests took to the streets to call for his resignation. In the last couple of years, Ortega has targeted the Catholic Church and has ordered many newspapers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and universities to close.
“The United States again calls on the Government of Nicaragua to immediately cease the arbitrary arrest and detention of its citizens for merely exercising their fundamental freedoms,” Sullivan said in the White House statement.
Mountain Gateway cheered the release of its Nicaraguan-based pastors and attorneys “after almost nine months of wrongful imprisonment,” as the organization petitioned the U.S. government, the Organization of American States and the United Nations to aid in their release.
“This is the day we have prayed and believed God for. These pastors and attorneys have suffered greatly for the sake of the Gospel, but it has not been in vain,” Jon Britton Hancock, founder of Mountain Gateway, said in a press release.
He continued: “The Kingdom of God is advancing because of their persecution. Today, we cry tears of joy because our brothers and sisters are free!”