Veteran journalist Luis Galeano, one of at least 94 Nicaraguans who have had their citizenship revoked by the Ortega Murillo regime for opposing the government, has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Galeano, who has continued critically reporting on the Sandinista government through his online platform, Café con voz, since arriving in the U.S. in 2018, has had an asylum application pending for about seven years, according to his wife, Daykel Santamaría. He also has a work permit and a social security number, she said. However, shortly after starting his second job driving for Lyft in Florida on Monday morning, ICE agents pulled him over. As of Wednesday, Galeano was being held at the Krome detention center in Miami. He has an immigration court date scheduled for October 2, Santamaría said. Javier Melendez, a sociologist and longtime friend of Galeano, said that deporting him to Nicaragua would be a “death sentence.” Melendez, who was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship by the Sandinista government, is now a U.S. citizen living in Washington, D.C. The denaturalization order also affected acclaimed novelist Sergio Ramírez and poet Gioconda Belli. ICE has not yet commented on Galeano’s detention. Melendez described the situation as a “double trauma”—Galeano fled his country due to his work, only to face detention in the U.S. because of domestic political issues. Galeano fled Nicaragua in December 2018, days after police raided 100% Noticias, the outlet where he worked, and issued an arrest order against him. He arrived in Miami shortly after and petitioned for asylum, Santamaría said. She was uncertain whether her husband was now effectively stateless due to the 2023 measure that denaturalized him as a Nicaraguan. Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a two-hour hearing on Tuesday about “Confronting the Totalitarian Ortega-Murillo Regime.” Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar, the committee chair, denounced the actions of Daniel Ortega and Rosa Murillo, warning them that the U.S. administration is paying attention. Ana María Méndez Dardón, Central America director at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that Galeano’s detention highlights the contradictions in the Trump administration’s approach to Nicaragua. She noted that the U.S. government is locking up a journalist targeted by the Nicaraguan government for exposing its authoritarian tendencies while simultaneously condemning those same actions. Galeano’s detention is one example of how due process is missing from the right to asylum under the Trump administration, she added. Salazar issued a statement after Galeano’s detention, emphasizing the need to distinguish between criminals and political exiles. Queries from the Guardian to the committee and its members went unanswered. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, another Florida GOP member, also called for Galeano’s release, stating that the U.S. should uphold its tradition of supporting those persecuted by tyranny. Galeano had been targeted for his reporting as far back as February 23, 2011, when Amnesty International issued an urgent action alert, warning that his life was in danger after an unknown caller threatened him. The caller referenced Galeano’s reporting for El Nuevo Diario on government misuse of around $20 million between 2004 and 2008. Recently, Galeano had been seeing ICE agents in Miami with growing concern while driving for Lyft. According to Melendez, who founded the think tank Expediente Abierto, Galeano had been planning a new journalism project—a morning news program on Latin America—before his detention. Santamaría said that Galeano and she had prepared mentally for such a scenario, having already experienced the trauma of exile and an arrest warrant. She described him as calm, expressing faith that the U.S. government would recognize the strength of his well-documented asylum case.