CPJ calls on ICE to release exiled Nicaraguan journalist Luis Galeano

Mexico City, September 15, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on U.S. immigration authorities to release Nicaraguan journalist 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 Uber, his wife, Deykel Santamaría, told the Nicaraguan news outlet Confidencial. 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.

“This detention fits into a troubling pattern in which the Trump administration has wielded immigration enforcement against members of the press,” said CPJ Américas Regional Director José Zamora, based in Miami. “It is critical that journalists who have sought asylum in the United States after fleeing persecution for their journalistic work are protected, not treated as targets for immigration enforcement.”

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 by the Ortega 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 the Florida Baker correctional facility in Sanderson Florida and is waiting for a hearing scheduled for October 2nd, according to Nicaraguan news website La Prensa.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.