The United States Government announced visa restrictions against more than 100 Nicaraguan officials and their families for their “complicity” with the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. At the same time, he accused electoral magistrate Lumberto Campbell Hooker of having participated “directly” in the denial of medical care to political prisoner Brooklyn Rivera, who died in state custody.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, accused those sanctioned of being “complicit” in the consolidation of the dictatorship in Nicaragua, accused by international organizations of serious violations of human rights and the closure of democratic spaces in Nicaragua.
“The United States supports the Nicaraguan people who, like Rivera, aspire to a free Nicaragua,” Rubio stressed, in a release issued on June 8, 2026 to announce the new measures of the Donald Trump Administration.
The Miskito indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera, 73 years old, died on May 30, 2026 at 8:30 p.m., after more than 970 days of illegal confinement. The dictatorship confirmed his death a day later and kept his body in police custody and ordered his burial in Managua.
With the new visa restrictions, the United States claims to have sanctioned more than 2,350 “Nicaraguan officials and their families for their complicity” with the dictatorship.
The decision was adopted under Presidential Proclamation 10309, a provision that “suspends entry into the United States, for both immigrants and nonimmigrants, to members of the Government of Nicaragua and other persons who formulate, implement or benefit from policies or actions that undermine democratic institutions.”
Lumberto Campbell directly accused
The head of US diplomacy directly pointed out that Campbell Hooker, previously sanctioned by Washington, had been directly involved in the “denial of medical care to Brooklyn Rivera and prevented his family from burying him.”
“The United States,” he warned, “will not ignore the responsibility of the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship in the horrible death of political prisoner Brooklyn Rivera.”
Campbell Hooker appeared in the photographs released by the regime on May 27, 2026when they reported on the “serious” state of health of the indigenous leader.
In the images, the coastal magistrate can be seen next to Brooklyn Rivera, while he remained bedridden in a hospital bed. Days later, he also participated in the sail organized by the regime in Managua.
The funeral services, in the Sierras de Paz cemetery, were controlled at all times by the Ortega dictatorship, after preventing his family from transferring the body to the Northern Caribbean Coast for burial, as was the express wish of the Miskito leader.
Even after death “My father is still kidnapped,” Tininiska Rivera warned in an interview with CONFIDENCIAL and This week. “They didn’t even give us that right, the right to say goodbye to him,” he said.
Since May 31, at least six of Rivera’s relatives remain missing, when they traveled from Bilwi to Managua to claim the body of the indigenous leader.
Since September 2023, the regime ignored multiple requests for “proof of life” from his relatives and the international community. The daughter of the indigenous leader emphasized that her father, at the time of his arrest, “left his house in optimal health conditions, walking and fending for himself.”
