‘They are hunting journalists’: Nicaragua’s covert repression tactics strike fear beyond borders

An estimated 268 Nicaraguan journalists have fled the Central American country for exile, many settling in the neighboring Costa Rica, to escape what CPJ’s research has documented to be a government-backed system of political repression and judicial harassment against media outlets that often prevents journalists, fearing for their families, from reporting the truth. Yet for some exiled journalists, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, that repression has followed them beyond borders.

Forced to uproot their operations to deliver critical reporting from the outside, the exiled journalists say they are still being targeted by Nicaragua’s state security with covert persuasion, coercion, and psychological pressure tactics in hopes of repressing their dissenting voices and gaining information about the whereabouts of others. Yet on the heels of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID funding — funding that many news outlets rely on across Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela—the journalists say their lives and their livelihoods hang in the balance now more than ever.

A covert campaign of fear and intimidation

CPJ has extensively documented Nicaragua’s press freedom crisis since the April 2018 eruption of anti-government protests calling for the end of President Daniel Ortega’s administration resulting in 325 reported deaths, including reporter Ángel Gahona, and the arrests of dozens journalists covering the protests. Using public raids and arrests, Ortega, who leads the country with his co-president and wife, Rosario Murillo, began a crackdown on independent media that saw the closure of dozens of outlets and a mass exile.

“They are hunting journalists,” an exiled journalist living in Costa Rica told CPJ after she said Nicaraguan authorities covertly approached her about removing her from the country’s blacklist in exchange for information on other exiled journalists. Within days, she fled Nicaragua, refusing to betray her peers.

“The way they contacted me and what they offered was what scared me the most,” she told CPJ, adding that many of her colleagues still in Nicaragua are “terrified, and full of guilt about what could happen to their family.” She added, “And the one[s] outside don’t feel any different.” 

Inside Nicaragua, families of journalists have learned to live in silence. They keep relationships secret to protect those who remain behind. In most cases, there are no phone calls, only brief encrypted text exchanges. Social media accounts are deleted, and relatives in exile are never mentioned.

Another exiled Nicaraguan journalist, who also requested anonymity due to security concerns, told CPJ that police paid a surprise visit to her sister’s home in the capital, Managua, to interrogate.

“My sister told them she hadn’t been in touch with me for years and that she hated me,” the journalist said.

“Statelessness is a kind of death”

In April 2025, CPJ joined six other press freedom groups in a joint statement condemning the Nicaraguan government’s failure to cooperate with the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process—a critical mechanism for assessing the human rights records of member states that has resulted in 279 recommendations for Nicaragua.

Moreover, the experiences recounted by the exiled journalists reflect a growing pattern of transnational repression documented by the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN), which has identified eight ways the state violates citizens’ rights beyond its borders, from the denial of passports to the persecution of families and threats against them abroad.

Gerald Chávez, director of the digital news outlet Nicaragua Actual and representative of the Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua — the country’s only remaining active journalist association — said he experienced Nicaragua’s transnational repression tactics personally in 2018 when he fled to Costa Rica and could not renew his documents.

In 2023, Nicaragua’s consulate in the Costa Rican capital, San José, refused to issue his new passport despite complete paperwork and payment. Later, when his family requested his birth certificate in Nicaragua, local authorities declined to release it.

“My country won’t renew my ID documents… my passport will never arrive,” Chávez told CPJ. In Spanish he calls it being “apatridia de facto,” or statelessness, which leaves him unable to travel, study, or access basic services in Costa Rica. Although Chávez can travel to a few countries using a refugee document issued by Costa Rica, most nations do not recognize it, and many airlines are unaware it exists, he explained.

“It’s a kind of death. A way to paralyze you from doing journalism,” he said.

Chávez and seven other Nicaraguan journalists have petitioned Spain — which in 2023 granted citizenship to Nicaraguans formally stripped of their nationality — to extend the same recognition to those like them who have been effectively rendered stateless.

As head of the journalists’ association, Chávez said his colleagues who remain in Nicaragua live under constant surveillance. “Many have stopped using their phones or even leaving their houses,” he said. “Talking about what is happening in the country can get you accused of spreading false information or destabilizing the state.”

Costa Rica is no longer a safe haven

An October 2025 quarterly report by the Foundation for Freedom of Expression and Democracy warned that the Nicaraguan government has intensified a campaign to coerce independent journalists into becoming informants through threats, harassment, and blackmail. If tactics such as digital, physical, and psychological harassment are spoken about publicly, reporters face prosecution under the 2020 Cybercrime Law, which criminalizes “false information” and is routinely used to silence the press. 

For Sergio Marín Cornavaca, director of the news website La Mesa Redonda, the risks facing exiled journalists in Costa Rica became undeniable after the June 2025 murder of former Nicaraguan army major and political commentator Roberto Samcam in San José.

“Roberto had denounced, over and over, the existence of espionage cells working for the Nicaraguan regime here in Costa Rica,” Marín said. “No one listened until it was too late.”

Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Organism (OIJ, by its Spanish acronym) said they are working to determine whether the crime had political motivations. On Friday, September 12, Costa Rican authorities announced the arrest of four people reported to be suspects in Samcam’s killing.

After Samcam’s murder, Costa Rican intelligence officials contacted Marín to warn him that he, too, was being watched by the Nicaraguan government. “They said I was on a list,” he told CPJ. “That I needed to move constantly, change houses, avoid public places.”

He relocated temporarily to a friend’s home for several weeks, a move that drained him financially. “I don’t have money,” he said. “I can’t stop working, but I can’t stay in one place either.”

Costa Rica, once viewed as a refuge for Nicaragua’s independent press, no longer feels safe for many journalists amid a growing security crisis marked by a sharp rise in homicides in recent years. Authorities recorded 907 killings in 2023, making it the most violent year in the country’s history. In 2024, the country recorded 880 homicides, the second-highest figure in the country’s history, according to data from the Judicial Investigation Organism (OIJ).

“It’s not secure for anyone,” Marín said, alleging, “there’s organized crime, contract killings, and Nicaragua’s embassy here is full of regime officials spying on the exile community.” According to Marín, even Costa Rican intelligence officials have acknowledged their situation and limits. “They told me straight, we don’t have the capacity to prevent anything,” he said. 
CPJ’s emails to Nicaragua’s Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Nicaraguan Embassy in San José regarding allegations of transnational repression did not receive any reply.

Repression without borders

In Costa Rica, Nicaraguan journalists told CPJ that they have been forced to establish informal security protocols to protect themselves—changing their routines, limiting public appearances, and using encrypted apps to communicate. 

“You live like a criminal,” Marín said. “Except your only crime is being a journalist.”

Meanwhile in Nicaragua, pro-government media pundits routinely attack exiled reporters on TV and social media, accusing them of being “traitors” or “foreign agents.” State-aligned commentators amplify these messages to discredit independent voices and deepen fear among those abroad. 

“It feeds the machinery of intimidation,” said Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua representative Chávez.

Chavéz told CPJ that many journalists have applied for relocation through the UNHCR’s Safe Mobility program, seeking asylum in Spain or Canada, now that the Trump administration has removed the United States from the initiative. Others have ceased doing journalism and are finding other means to support their families. 

“The attacks, threats, and denials of documentation reveal a systematic effort to silence critical voices, even beyond national territory,” Marín added.

In an emailed statement, Costa Rica’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), which analyses the country’s security information, told CPJ that it is aware of the risks faced by Nicaraguan journalists exiled in the country but has no legal authority to provide them with protection, adding that its role is limited to analyzing risk and potential transnational threats.

Requests for protection, when applicable, must be petitioned through existing state mechanisms such as the OIJ’s victims and witness protection program or the public prosecutor’s victim protection office, said the DIS. Costa Rica’s refugee protection framework provides documentation and access to basic services but does not include direct security measures. 

CPJ’s email to UNHCR (ACNUR) seeking comment on protection measures for Nicaraguan journalists in exile did not receive a reply.