In 2018, I watched my homeland Nicaragua unravel into a human rights disaster. Protesters against government corruption were met with brutal crackdowns.
Students, journalists, priests and activists were arrested or forced into exile. Universities were stripped of their independence, and civic freedoms — speech, press, and protest — became punishable offenses and “treason to the homeland.”
Nicaragua now sits on human rights watchlists from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, its government condemned for silencing dissent.
“The ongoing political crisis in Nicaragua has been marked by severe human rights violations, including the stripping of Nicaraguan nationality from political opponents and the arbitrary arrests and detentions of human rights defenders, religious leaders, and Indigenous leaders.” Amnesty International reported in 2023.
When I fled I believed I was escaping that fate. The U.S. was supposed to be different: a place where democracy was protected, not dismantled. But now, under the looming cloud of another Trump presidency, I find myself watching this country repeat the same mistakes I thought I had left behind.
On March 10, the U.S. was added to CIVICUS’s (a non-profit alliance of civil society organisations focused on citizen actions and civil rights) global watchlist, marked as having a “narrowed civic space” due to Trump’s attacks on civil liberties and democratic norms.
“The United States has been added to the Watchlist as it faces increasing undue restrictions on civic freedoms under President Donald Trump’s second term. Gross abuses of executive power raise serious concerns over the freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association,” according to CIVICUS’ March 2025 Watchlist.
The country that once positioned itself as a defender of freedom is now being watched for violating it.
The Slow Death of Free Speech
In Nicaragua, we didn’t lose free speech overnight, it happened bit by bit. First, certain topics became too “controversial” to discuss in universities. Then, professors were fired for opposing and calling out government actions.
Eventually, entire campuses like Central American University (UCA), my previous school, and Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (UPOLI) were shut down and repurposed by the dictatorship to spread their propaganda through education.
I see echoes of that here.
President Trump and his allies are already pushing to ban discussions on race, gender, and systemic injustice in classrooms across the U.S. His cabinet is actively working to censor books and suppress student leaders like Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident and activist who led pro-Palestine protests in Columbia and is now in removal proceedings as per a State Department order.
What happens when universities become battlegrounds for state-controlled narratives?
What happens when America stops pretending to be different?
History Repeats Itself
If there is one thing I have learned, it is that silence enables oppression. In Nicaragua, we lost our democracy because too many people believed it couldn’t happen.
Many thought that as long as it wasn’t happening to them, they didn’t have to fight back. The U.S. is following that same path, and if people don’t start resisting now, there will come a day when resistance is no longer an option.
The warning signs are there. The question is: will Americans pay attention before it’s too late?
I came to this country because I believed in its promise. Watching that promise erode is heartbreaking.
If the U.S. is now on a human rights watchlist we should all be paying attention. Because once civil liberties start disappearing, they rarely come back.
Believe me, I know that firsthand.
