Luis Galeano, director of the radio and internet program Café con Voz, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on the morning of September 14 in Orlando, Florida.
Galeano was detained while driving for the rideshare app Lyft, his wife, Deykel Santamaría, told CNN. While being transported to a police station, he was able to call her and ask her to contact his lawyer and notify journalists of his detention.
Galeano fled Nicaragua in 2018 under the Ortega government’s crackdown on independent media and has directed Café con Voz from exile since then. In February 2023, he was among 94 Nicaraguans stripped of their citizenship under the country’s current Ortega-Murillo government, which accused them of being “traitors to the homeland” and ordered the confiscation of their assets.
CPJ has extensively documented Nicaragua’s press freedom crisis, which has driven an estimated 268 Nicaraguan journalists into exile, many of them settling in neighboring Costa Rica.
Galeano is being held in Kromer North SPC, an immigration facility in Miami Florida and is waiting for a hearing scheduled for October 2, according to Nicaraguan news website La Prensa.
ICE did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment but responded to the Spanish newspaper El Pais that “ICE arrested Luis Manuel Chavarría-Galeano, a Nicaraguan national who is unlawfully present in the United States, during routine immigration enforcement operations.” ICE said that Galeano “entered the country legally on December 21, 2018, with authorization to remain until June 20, 2019. In violation of our nation’s laws, he remained in the country beyond the authorized period. He will remain in ICE custody while his removal proceedings are processed.”