GUATEMALA CITY — Sergio Mena's life dissolved in hours.
After years resisting President Daniel Ortega, the rural activist fled Nicaragua in 2018, joining thousands of protesters fleeing a yearslong crackdown on dissent.
Mena returned from exile in neighboring Costa Rica in 2021 to continue protesting, only to be thrown in a prison where he said jailers hung prisoners by their feet and shocked them with electricity.
"We were tortured all the time, physically and psychologically, from the moment we arrived until the very last day," said Mena, 40.
Now in exile in Guatemala, Mena may be out of prison but he's far from free. Upon their release, he and hundreds of religious leaders, students, activists, dissidents and journalists were rendered "stateless" – stripped of their citizenship, homes and government pensions.
The United Nations says that they're among 4.4 million stateless people worldwide who struggle to find jobs, education and healthcare or even open bank accounts or marry without valid ID documents.
"Statelessness is torture," said Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough executive director of United Stateless, a U.S.-based organization advocating for the stateless. "You just legally cease to exist, even if you're here physically as a human."
Free but unfree
In September, Ortega's government loaded Mena and 134 other prisoners onto the flight that took them to Guatemala. They joined 317 others whom the government has deemed adversaries who no longer deserve legal Nicaraguan identities.
The Associated Press spoke to more than 24 Nicaraguan exiles who have been stripped of their citizenship and are trying to chart paths forward. They're scattered across the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico and Spain in limbo as they struggle to recover from physical and psychological trauma, extending the torture many suffered in Nicaragua.
The Ortega government did not respond to a request for comment by the AP.
The agony of statelessness
The majority of stateless people worldwide are born to refugees and migrants in countries that don't offer birthright citizenship, the right to become a citizen if you're born within a country's territory.
Many Nicaraguans struggle to scrape together enough money to feed themselves. Others hide away in fear that the Nicaraguan government will someday come for them. Many more reel from watching their lives go up in smoke. For those stranded in the U.S. or seeking respite there, President-elect Donald Trump's promises to crack down on immigration and asylum have added more uncertainty.
Intensifying repression
Ortega's government began stripping people of their citizenship early last year.
It was in that crackdown that Mena, the member of a rural activist movement, said he was imprisoned. The government claimed that he had participated in drug trafficking and organized crime, which he denies.
In February 2023, the government broke international law when it began sending prisoners to the U.S and most recently to Guatemala. Others in exile were stripped of their citizenship without ever having been jailed.
Torment beyond borders
The Nicaraguan government has not explained why it released Mena and other people from prison, although experts have speculated about the desire to duck international criticism and the costs involved while continuing to maintain a grip on enemies.
Mena lives in a hotel in Guatemala City, where he flips through photos of a crumbling jail, scraps of food and his bruised, beaten body – indelible memories of more than two years in prison. His life is painted by constant fear.
"The tentacles of (the Nicaraguan government) still reach here," he said with tears in his eyes.
The Biden administration has offered the Nicaraguans temporary protections and Mena hopes the U.S. government will grant him asylum, but such protections are likely to vanish or be severely restricted under Trump. The Spanish government has offered to provide nationality to some of the stateless exiles, but few have the resources needed to build a new life in Spain, or are confused about the process.
Stateless struggle
Allan Bermudez, 54, was a university professor in Nicaragua. He was imprisoned after accusations that he was conspiring against the government as Ortega identified universities as hotbeds for antigovernment protests.
In February 2023, he was among 222 prisoners loaded onto a flight to the United States with no idea where they were going. While the U.S. government provided Bermudez and others with temporary support, a few days at a hotel, a new phone, $400 and limited access to aid from a group of NGOs, help has since dried up.
Today, Bermudez, who has multiple advanced degrees, works at a Dunkin' Donuts on the fringes of Salisbury, Maryland, struggling to pick up hours.
He rents a small room, suffers from chronic heart problems and post-traumatic stress disorder, and has no medical care.
"I haven't bought my medicine, because if I do, I'll have nothing to eat," he said.
Back in Nicaragua, his mother had stroke this year. He's struggled to send money home. With his daughter and wife also back home, he's plagued with anxiety and depression.
He applied for asylum in February after living in the U.S. under humanitarian parole offered by the Biden administration but said he hasn't heard back. He's put all his hopes into building a life in the U.S. and doesn't know what he'll do if asylum doesn't come through.
"I can't leave, I have my hands tied," he said. "All I can do is pray that God helps me."
Lives upended
Like Bermudez, hundreds of thousands have fled Nicaragua. Thousands of civil society organizations have been shuttered, their assets seized as the government seeks to silence any dissent.
While many of the Nicaraguan exiles hope to one day return to their country, 82-year-old Moises Hassan has given up hope as he hides away in a town in the mountains of Costa Rica.
Hassan was once a guerrilla fighter against the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship and then, alongside Ortega, a member of the junta that succeeded it. He built a family and a home with thousands of books, and planned to live out the rest of his days there.
He was elected mayor of the capital, Managua, but saw his life and hopes sour when he began to criticize Ortega's anti-democratic moves. He fled the country in 2021. While on a trip to visit his daughter he heard the government was detaining critics, and knew they would come for him.
It was no surprise when his name appeared on a list of people who were stripped of their citizenship and home and called traitors.
"The message is ... 'Don't think that just because you're out of the country that you're out of our reach,'" he said.
But he said that with his pension seized along with his belongings, it has been a shock to depend on money from his children.
He and his wife remain in their corner of Costa Rica, too scared to even go to the capital, where they worry Ortega's agents could track them down.
"I feel like I'm under house arrest," he said, cradling his worn, now useless Nicaraguan passport. "I'm a prisoner in my own home."
