WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Congress has moved to revive one of its longest-standing tools of pressure against Nicaragua’s government, introducing legislation to reauthorize and expand the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act (NICA Act) just days after President Daniel Ortega declared the country would never hold elections again.
NICA Revisited
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas introduced S.5369 on August 7, formally titled “a bill to reauthorize and expand the imposition of sanctions under the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act of 2018, and for other purposes.” The bill was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where it remains in the earliest stage of the legislative process.
According to the bill’s text, it would extend the authorities of the original 2018 NICA Act, enhance sanctions on sectors of Nicaragua’s economy that generate revenue for the Ortega family specifically, impose new sanctions tied to the government’s abuses against the Catholic Church and political prisoners, and direct a coordinated diplomatic strategy to restrict international investment and lending that benefits Nicaragua’s government.
The measure would also suspend Nicaragua’s treatment as a party to the CAFTA-DR free trade agreement, prohibit new U.S. investment in the country, and support Nicaraguan human rights advocacy at the United Nations.
The Trigger
The timing is not coincidental. Nicaraguan opposition figure Juan Sebastián Chamorro connected the legislative move explicitly to Ortega’s own recent declaration, writing on social media: “Given the refusal to hold elections in Nicaragua, the U.S. Congress... reactivates the NICA Act to impose sanctions on the regime.”
Ortega used the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution on July 19 to declare flatly that Nicaragua would never again hold elections, vowing that parties “backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas” would never return to power — a statement that closed off any remaining formal, legal path for the country’s opposition and effectively confirmed what years of managed, widely condemned elections had already made functionally true.
A Law With a Long History
The original NICA Act has deep roots in Florida’s congressional delegation. It was introduced in the Senate by Cruz with Marco Rubio, then a senator, as a cosponsor, and championed in the House by then-Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. It passed unanimously and was signed into law in December 2018, conditioning U.S. support for international financial institution loans to Nicaragua on the Ortega government meeting specific human rights and anti-corruption benchmarks.
Congress expanded the framework in 2021 with the RENACER Act, passed in response to Ortega’s jailing of seven potential opposition presidential candidates ahead of that year’s widely condemned election.
Rubio, since becoming Secretary of State, has continued pushing the same underlying framework: in a prior Senate role, he co-sponsored bipartisan legislation with Senator Tim Kaine to extend U.S. sanctions authority against the Ortega-Murillo government through the end of 2028, explicitly citing the regime’s alignment with Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and China.
Where Nicaragua Sanctions Already Stand
The new bill would build on an already extensive sanctions architecture. The Trump administration has designated the Ortega-Murillo government a dictatorship and imposed sanctions on more than 2,350 Nicaraguan officials and their family members, alongside visa restrictions targeting the same group.
Nicaraguan reporting frames the current legislative push as part of a broader administration strategy explicitly aimed at “accelerating” a resolution to the crisis that has gripped the country since anti-government protests began in April 2018 — a crisis whose central demand, free and fair elections, Ortega has now formally and publicly foreclosed.
A Pattern That Cuts Across Administrations
Notably, Nicaragua sanctions have been one of the few consistent threads in U.S. Latin America policy across changes in the White House.
The original NICA Act passed under the first Trump administration; the RENACER Act passed under Biden; and the current push to reauthorize and expand the framework is unfolding under Trump’s second term, with Rubio now overseeing the effort from the State Department rather than the Senate floor. That continuity reflects a rare point of durable, bipartisan consensus on Nicaragua specifically, even as U.S. policy toward other Latin American governments has shifted more visibly with each change in administration.
What To Come
S.5369 remains in its earliest legislative stage, awaiting committee action before any path to a floor vote. Given the bipartisan pattern that carried the original 2018 NICA Act and the 2021 RENACER Act into law — both ultimately passing by unanimous or near-unanimous margins — the bill’s odds of eventually advancing appear favorable, though its timeline remains uncertain.
For Nicaragua’s opposition, much of it already imprisoned, exiled, or operating underground since Ortega’s declaration, the bill offers a rare piece of tangible, external pressure at a moment when the country’s own legal and electoral avenues for change have been explicitly closed off by the government itself.
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