AP

Fleeing Nicaraguans strain Costa Rica’s asylum system

Sep 2, 2022, 5:13 AM | Updated: 5:24 am

Nicaraguan asylum-seekers meet to film a short video that will be part of video showing Nicaraguans...

Nicaraguan asylum-seekers meet to film a short video that will be part of video showing Nicaraguans in exile worldwide, in San Jose, Costa Rica, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. Since the summer of 2021 when Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega locked up dozens of political opponents ahead of November’s presidential elections, Nicaraguans have been seeking asylum in Costa Rica at the highest levels since Nicaragua’s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — After four years of trying to continue his studies in Nicaragua, Elton Rivera finally reached the same conclusion as thousands of his countrymen. The government shuttered his university, its director told him he was going into exile and warned that the police were coming for Rivera too.

Rivera surveyed the various safe houses he had used after his arrest in 2018 and realized that no one who had sheltered him was left. “The only option is to go to Costa Rica, which is what I have closest and where I have the most contacts,” he said. He snuck out of Nicaragua along a trail over a mountain in February and was soon on a bus to San Jose.

Rivera immediately sought asylum. The Costa Rican government gave him an appointment to formalize his request — in 2030.

Since the summer of 2021, when Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega locked up dozens of political opponents ahead of November’s presidential elections, Nicaraguans have been seeking asylum in Costa Rica at the highest levels since Nicaragua’s political crisis exploded in April 2018.

The exodus of Nicaraguans fleeing political repression has neighboring Costa Rica’s asylum system teetering under the weight of applications that exceed even the 1980s when civil wars ravaged Central America.

Asylum seekers now account for 4% of Costa Rica’s population. Despite having only 5 million citizens, Costa Rica trailed only the United States, Germany and Mexico in the number of asylum applications it received last year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Costa Rican officials now confirm more than 200,000 pending applications and another 50,000 people waiting for their appointment to make a formal application. Nicaraguans account for nearly nine out of 10 applicants.

The asylum seekers are added pressure for the new administration of President Rodrigo Chaves who is trying to jump-start an economy hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That has been an incredible increase,” said Allan Rodríguez, deputy director of Costa Rica’s immigration agency, which also oversees the asylum system. “It has put the capacities of the administration to the test. It has made us reinvent ourselves not only in the reception process, but also in how to resolve this issue.”

Rodríguez said that the system has been bolstered in terms of its ability to take asylum applications — the U.N. refugee agency contracted 50 people to help — but that remaining challenges include resolving the cases quickly and integrating asylees into Costa Rican society.

Rivera, 28, was in the final year of studying medicine at Nicaragua’s largest public university and not particularly interested in politics when protests broke out in April 2018 in response to changes to the social security system. Senior citizens who took to the streets were roughed up by police, so university students came out in support of the pensioners.

Rivera went to do his rounds at a hospital the next day and saw wounded students flooding in. On the second day of protests, police beat him and tossed him in a filthy cell for six hours before releasing him. The arrest made him a leader among other medical students, which eventually got him expelled.

He later enrolled in a private university as a political science major because it did not have a medical school and was a few classes short of finishing his degree when Ortega’s government shut down the school, and a number of other private universities in February.

Rivera is now trying to continue his studies outside Nicaragua. Even with his asylum appointment eight years off, he said: “I’ve been calm about it because I know the quantity of Nicaraguans there are here and Costa Rica is a very small country.”

Xaviera Molina, 27, has already been granted asylum because she left Nicaragua in one of the early waves in July 2018.

Molina, a marketing major, was a single mother at the time in the second year of her degree track. She had never been involved in activism, but when students expanded the protest against Ortega’s government she got involved, first distributing food and then helping provide medical care to wounded students.

“I was basically a nurse by accident,” Molina said.

The government increased its repression of protests, mounting an operation in July 2018 to clear the barricades protesters had erected around neighborhoods of resistance throughout Nicaragua. Molina went into hiding and then decided she had to leave the country.

Molina fled across the border to Costa Rica in July 2018, requested asylum and received it last October. She went 1 ½ years without seeing her daughter who remained with her parents in Nicaragua.

She said the process was slow, but she was able to work, opened her own catering business and brought her daughter to Costa Rica.

“I know people who have been here four years like me and they still haven’t accepted that they have to stay,” Molina said. “They still haven’t bought a bed because they feel like at any moment they’re going to go back.”

This March, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with officials in Costa Rica. The Biden administration was interested in seeing Costa Rica and Mexico, two countries with relatively robust asylum systems, continue taking as many asylum seekers as possible.

In his State of the Union Address that month, Biden said, “We’re securing commitments and supporting partners in South and Central America to host more refugees and secure their own borders.”

Diego Pérez, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Costa Rica, said that with the COVID-19 pandemic, Costa Rica’s asylum system no longer “has the same capacity to absorb or integrate (asylum seekers), including in the labor market.”

Gabriela Nuñez, the Costa Rica director for the U.S.-based refugee-support organization HIAS, notes that before the Nicaragua crisis Costa Rica was accustomed to receiving about 5,000 asylum requests annually. Now the country receives more than that in a month.

“There is an emergency in terms of how people are seeking access to the territory, to the process and finally how many are ultimately recognized,” Nuñez said.

Now some worry that the years-long wait for an appointment is leading more Nicaraguans to look north — to Mexico or the United States — than at any point in their country’s four-plus year political crisis.

Through July of this year, 5,335 Nicaraguans have sought asylum in Mexico, four times as many as all of 2021. In many cases, applying for asylum in Mexico is just a way for asylum seekers to reach the U.S. border.

Last year, U.S. border agents encountered Nicaraguans more than 50,000 times at the southwest border. Through the first 10 months of the 2022 fiscal year, they have encountered Nicaraguans 134,000 times.

For most however, Costa Rica remains the top choice for Nicaraguans seeking safety, due to its proximity, familiarity and possible existing family ties.

Still, it can be a difficult transition. Costa Rica is more expensive. Nicaraguans forced to flee quickly are not able to take much with them; professional certifications do not transfer; it takes time to determine what grade children should enter in a different education system.

Three months after applying for asylum, applicants can begin working legally. But many said that some employers do not recognize the government-issued card identifying them as asylum seekers. Others have managed to open small businesses, but say they are not eligible for loans.

Rivera is trying to make the best of it. He founded an organization called Bridges for Nicaraguan Students, which aims to help exiled students find ways to continue their studies.

Soon Rivera will travel to Romania to resume his medical studies, but he doesn’t plan to stop his political activism.

When he had decided to leave Nicaragua, Rivera remembers thinking: “I’m going to bother them more there, continue talking there, keep raising my voice there.”

__

Sherman reported from Mexico City. AP videojournalist Berny Araya in San Jose contributed to this report.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


              A Nicaraguan family arrives to a Catholic church where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has set up a field office to assist people applying for asylum in San Jose, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. A painting hangs of Cuban's "Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre" or, Our Lady of Charity. Nicaraguans have been seeking asylum in Costa Rica at the highest levels since Nicaragua’s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguans wait for their first interviews in their application for asylum outside the Refugee Service Center in San Jose, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. The exodus of Nicaraguans fleeing political repression has neighboring Costa Rica’s asylum system teetering under the weight of applications that exceed even the 1980s when civil wars ravaged Central America. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan Xaviera Molina, center, who was granted asylum in Costa Rica, listens to Ruth Blass Lopez who is applying for asylum, at a diner that serves traditional Nicaraguan food ownd by a Nicaraguan asylum-seeker in San Jose, Costa Rica, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. Molina, a marketing major, was a single mother at the time in the second year of her degree track when students expanded the protest against Ortega’s government and she got involved, first distributing food and then eventually helping provide medical care to wounded students. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Evelyn Morales Cuningham checks her phone outside the diner she opened this year in San Jose, Costa Rica, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. The 28-year-old said she quickly sold several of her businesses and home in Nicaragua in 2018 when she took her three children to Costa Rica and applied for asylum, where she continues to wait for approval. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              A Nicaraguan baseball player for the local Mets team waits to bat in a preparation game against La Carpio ahead of baseball season at Sabana Park in San Jose, Costa Rica, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2022. The number of players for the local league in Costa Rica has increased since Nicaraguans began seeking asylum at the highest levels since their country['s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Cristopher Mendoza does a Facebook live broadcast for a Nicaraguan audience of a local baseball game between the Mets and La Carpio during a preparation tournament before the start of the regular season at Sabana Park in San Jose, Costa Rica, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2022. The number of players for the local league in Costa Rica has increased since Nicaraguans began seeking asylum at the highest levels since their country['s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguans hold a baseball tournament ahead of the regular season at Sabana Park in San Jose, Costa Rica, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2022. The number of players for the local league in Costa Rica has increased since Nicaraguans began seeking asylum at the highest levels since their country['s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan Wilmer Ramos, sitting, shares corn tortillas with a teammate before they play in a preparation tournament before the start of the local baseball league at Sabana Park in San Jose, Costa Rica, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2022. The number of players for the local league in Costa Rica has increased since Nicaraguans began seeking asylum at the highest levels since their country['s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan journalist Hector Rosales, right, does a virtual interview of a Colombian Congresswoman from a studio-apartment used by Nicaraguan journalists in exile who report on their home country from San Jose, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. Since the summer of 2021 when Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega locked up dozens of political opponents ahead of November’s presidential elections, Nicaraguans have been seeking asylum in Costa Rica at the highest levels since Nicaragua’s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Lludely Aburto Ruiz poses for photos at Democracy Square in San Jose, Costa Rica, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022. The 56-year-old said she was getting ready to retire from a nonprofit that offered education and health services but had to leave Nicaragua after months of police harassment in front of her home and being frequently mentioned in pro-government press outlets and attacked on social media due to her activism with the political opposition. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan David Esteban Narvaez poses for a portrait after receiving his asylum seeker credentials, which allows him to stay and work legally in Costa Rica, outside the Refugee Service Center in San Jose, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. Three months after applying for asylum, applicants can begin working legally, but many said that some employers do not recognize the government-issued card identifying them as asylum seekers. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Katherine Ramirez poses for a portrait as she walks to the bus stop on her way home from work in San Jose, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. The 23-year-old who left Nicaragua in March and became a student leader among Nicaraguan students in exile, is hoping to continue her political science education in Costa Rica. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Elton Rivera poses for a portrait by the railroad tracks in San Jose, Costa Rica, late Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. Rivera snuck out of Nicaragua along a trail over a mountain in February and was soon on a bus to San Jose after the government shuttered his university, its director told him he was going into exile and warned that the police were coming for Rivera too. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Carlos Eddy Monterrey wears the "Macho Raton" costume used to perform a traditional Nicaraguan dance as he meets with other exiled Nicaraguans in San Jose, Costa Rica, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. Monterrey met with other Nicaraguans to film a short video that will be part of video showing Nicaraguans in exile worldwide. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
            
              Nicaraguan asylum-seekers meet to film a short video that will be part of video showing Nicaraguans in exile worldwide, in San Jose, Costa Rica, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. Since the summer of 2021 when Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega locked up dozens of political opponents ahead of November’s presidential elections, Nicaraguans have been seeking asylum in Costa Rica at the highest levels since Nicaragua’s political crisis exploded in April 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

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Fleeing Nicaraguans strain Costa Rica’s asylum system