EXCLUSIVE: Hundreds of African migrants sneak into the US in broad daylight after exploiting immigration loophole in Nicaragua that allows them in with no questions asked for just $160

  • Hundreds of migrants from Africa and elsewhere are using a loophole in Nicaraguan immigration law to make their way to the United States 
  • DailyMail.com traveled to Lukeville, Arizona, and saw at least 600 migrants, many of them African refugees, crossing the southern border on one day alone
  • Our footage shows Mexican cartels helping the migrants by cutting open the steel bars of the 30-foot-high fence that is supposed to keep Arizonans safe 

Baba, a mechanic from the West African nation of Mauritania threw himself to the ground and prayed seconds after squeezing through the steel fence at the Mexican border in Arizona. 

‘Joe Biden opened the door for us,’ he gleefully yelled as dusk fell and the migrants waited to be picked up and processed by U.S. authorities.

‘I wanted to come here to be free. You cannot put a price on freedom,’ added Baba, one of an increasing number of migrants from several African countries who are now joining the influx along the southern border.

But while Baba, 25, thanked Biden’s border control policies for the chance of a new life in America, there is really one other person he should be showing his gratitude to.

That man is Daniel Ortega, the 77-year-old long-time strongman in Nicaragua, a close ally of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and an implacable foe of the United States which has imposed sanctions on his country.

For Nicaragua is now playing an increasingly important role in the migrant crisis, allowing in people from all over the world for a $160 fee and then turning a blind eye to where they go next, DailyMail.com has learned. In fact, a regular tourist visa costs just $10, according to the U.S. Embassy there, suggesting the smugglers are getting a hefty mark-up.

Soft-touch entry requirements for nationals of a slew of African countries mean they can purchase a low-cost visa on arrival in its capital, Managua, without any proof of onward travel.

Baba, like many of the young men that DailyMail.com spoke to, claimed that he had paid the $160 for paperwork allowing him to enter that country.

Officials then appear to turn a blind eye to the lucrative people-smuggling business occurring right under their noses, effectively creating a back door into the U.S.

Brazen smugglers even boast on TikTok of how potential asylum-seekers are ‘guaranteed’ to be let into America once they arrive at its border with Mexico.

‘Come and live this experience with us,’ says one French language post. ‘Next departure is September 18, Ins’allah.’ Another read: ‘Must be financially prepared and ready for adventure. Once in Mexico you enter the USA without worries so relax.’

The posts promise cheap deals on airfares from West Africa, although who exactly is raking in the proceeds of those sales remains unclear.

It could give rise to the suspicion that Ortega, a long-time foe of the United States whose wife and children have been hit by sanctions, is weaponizing the flow of migrants barely a year before what will be a hotly contested presidential election.

Baba, who was sporting a Liverpool F.C. jersey like his soccer idol Mohammed Salah, came through in Lukeville, Arizona, a tiny town of just 40 people across the border from Sonoyta in the Mexican state of Sonora.

On Saturday, DailyMail.com witnessed at least 600 enter in Lukeville. Coyotes who were paid to escort them through cut holes in the fence that is supposed to keep them out.

For the migrants it was the end of what was for some a month-long journey. Baba flew a total of more than 11,300 miles to get to the United States and then had a 3,000 mile trek on land.

‘I flew from Mauritania to Istanbul,’ Baba explained, barely able to contain his joy at reaching Arizona. ‘From there, we took a flight to Bogota in Colombia.

‘Once we landed in Colombia, we went to El Salvador and then to Nicaragua. 

‘It was only there that we left the airport.’

Once he had landed, Baba still had a long and dangerous trek through Central America and Mexico ahead of him. But he had landed in the Americas and now the United States beckoned.  

Baba blamed ‘repression’ in his homeland as his reason for fleeing. 

The increase in the number of African migrants comes just four months after the Biden administration ended Title 42 on May 11, a Trump-era coronavirus edict based on an 80-year-old public health law, that made it possible to immediately boot asylum seekers out.

Officials detected 144,000 migrants who entered from Mexico in June, but now numbers are starting to rise once more with agents spotting 183,000 in July, the last month for which data is available.

DailyMail.com saw at least 600 self-proclaimed refugees sneak across the frontier on Saturday in what many said was a bid to find a better life in America.

Devious smugglers used cutting tools to slice open the steel bars of the 30-foot-high fence that is supposed to keep residents of the Grand Canyon State safe – often in broad daylight.

Overworked and overstretched border agents patrolled the fence in marked US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) vehicles 24/7. They desperately and repeatedly welded shut the holes that had been smashed open by cartel lackeys in what was clearly a thankless game of cat-and-mouse.

‘Honestly, sometimes I just don’t want to come to work anymore,’ said one Border Patrol guard, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Authorities conservatively estimate that more than 2,000 migrants sneak into the U.S. each day in the area close to Lukeville. The border stretches across the 262-mile Tucson region from the state border with New Mexico to Yuma in western Arizona.

As many as 39,000 illegal aliens were picked up in July here, up from 24,000 the previous month.

DailyMail.com saw some 300 people cross – not all of whom were Africans. There were many young men  from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as well as families from Latin America, who crept into the country earlier on Saturday afternoon.

And the smugglers struck again just before 6pm local time as daylight began to fade.

Through the fence, DailyMail.com saw one group of 70 African migrants, nearly all of them young in their twenties and thirties.

They were dropped off in large white semis outside the Café El Trocadero, a ramshackle fast-food restaurant popular with truckers and a well-known smuggling hotspot over the border.

Two men, dressed in T-shirts and jeans, casually led them up to the fence and sawed through the steel barrier so their human cargo could wander freely into the United States.

Their movements will be detected by the border patrol mobile observation posts that are dotted around the nearby hills.