Behind the customers ordering pastries at the counter, somewhere among the movement of bakers, cooks and delivery drivers for the Red Hen Baking Co. in Middlesex, two women from the northern highland region of Nicaragua prepared for the lunch rush.

Nereyda Urbina and Seydi Moncada, part of the 65-strong regiment manning the popular bakery and cafe, are among a large group of Nicaraguans who have moved to central Vermont through a special federal humanitarian program for residents of four conflict-torn countries. 

Both women started at Red Hen in the last year, cleaning floors and washing dishes. On a morning earlier this summer, Urbina worked in the kitchen preparing salads and sandwiches. Moncada brushed out bread baskets, readying them for the hand-shaped loaves they would soon carry. 

Red Hen is something of an institution in the area, its bread sold in grocery stores across Vermont. Owners Randy George and Eliza Cain have made a concerted effort to integrate the two women, paying interpreters to attend performance reviews, purchasing a business Duolingo for the rest of the staff to learn Spanish, and hanging up a flipboard with translations of technical baking terms. At a staff talent show in May, Moncada performed a traditional Nicaraguan dance. 

“I’m overwhelmed with joy that that’s our workspace, our everyday work environment,” said Cain.

In their short time here, the more than two dozen Nicaraguans — all from the region of Matagalpa — have taken up jobs baking, cooking, painting houses, teaching Spanish, and taking care of elderly and disabled neighbors. On the face of it, theirs looks like an immigration success story, of newcomers finding a better life in America and, in the process, becoming part of the communities that welcome them. 

But the federal program they have come under has a two-year limit. Unless it is extended, these Nicaraguans will have to pack up the lives they’ve built here in Vermont — and face returning to a country that no longer guarantees them any rights. 

Moncada, her husband, and their two teenage sons were the first Nicaraguans to arrive in the area under the humanitarian program. A university professor and researcher in Nicaragua, Moncada quit her job and applied for a spot within days of its announcement. 

Back home, her husband Omar Montalván worked as a mental health counselor and in human resources. Here, he is an all-purpose handyman, renovating kitchens, installing new decks, or painting houses. Though their jobs have changed, the opportunity for work the couple have found in Vermont has not ceased to amaze them. 

“Think about it: if I go paint houses on a Saturday and make $50 for two hours, that money goes a long way for my mom in Nicaragua,” said Montalván. 

By next April, if the program is not extended, the family’s time will be up. A decision looms about what to do next. Returning to Nicaragua, however, is out of the question, said Montalván.  

“When I left, I kissed my family and I told them: ‘No matter who dies, I’m not coming back.’”

From Matagalpa to Middlesex

What links the mountains of northern Nicaragua to central Vermont began more than 30 years ago, when an 18-year-old student from Middlesex came to live at the home of Urbina’s grandmother in the city of Matagalpa. 

Beth Merrill’s arrival in Nicaragua in 1992 — on a semester-long college exchange program — came soon after the end of more than a decade of civil war in the country. Her time in the neighborhood of La Chispa marked her for life. 

“It’s a really marginalized community. Taxi drivers don’t want to take you there,” said Merrill, who for years afterward would keep a home in both the Matagalpa region and Montpelier. 

Teaching first-graders at the local school, Merrill was shocked by the lack of educational material. Chief amongst them: the absence of books to teach children to read.

“A lot of the kids said they needed a library,” said Merrill.

Years later, having collected donations in central Vermont, Merrill bought a plot of land in Matagalpa and built one. In 2002, the library of La Chispa was born, and alongside it Planting Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the educational opportunities for children in the area.

Building preschools in local communities, driving a book bus to remote villages, offering cultural exchanges between Vermont and Nicaragua — Planting Hope soon became much more than just a neighborhood library. As the organization ballooned, Merrill realized that she needed someone who could direct things in Nicaragua full-time. And she knew just the woman for the job: Mercedes Guerrero. 

“Mercedes was very connected and vibrant and a community organizer at such a young age,” said Merrill. 

Guerrero describes herself as being “de pilas puestas” — a Spanish expression that literally translates to “having your batteries on,” meaning someone who is full of vigor and initiative. 

“We had a limited budget, but we did so many things,” said Guerrero, who arrived in Montpelier with her husband and daughter in July 2023.

As the director of Planting Hope, Guerrero established a network of host families in the nearby town of San Ramón. Those host families took in the generations of Vermonters who participated in the organization’s service-learning program. Through it, Merrill estimates that over 1,000 people from central Vermont traveled to Nicaragua. 

When their help was later needed to sponsor Nicaraguan families — a requirement of the humanitarian program — many of them responded.

“It speaks to Vermonters. People have bent over backwards to make things work,” said Merrill, who herself sponsored Moncada’s family from San Ramón. 

‘Humanitarian parole’

Planting Hope might have conceivably kept growing. But in 2018, after sweeping anti-government protests were followed by a brutal police crackdown, Nicaragua took a markedly authoritarian turn. 

“You could hear the shots from my house, and the next day we saw them dead on the streets, just laying there,” Urbina recalled. 

One of the main targets were foreign nonprofits, who the government accused of “undermining national integrity.” American organizations are particularly despised by President Daniel Ortega, who denounces them as part of the long history of U.S. interference in Nicaragua, from the Marine Corps occupation of the country from 1912 to 1933, to U.S. funding of rebel Contra militias in the 1980s. 

On May 24, 2022, the day after throwing a party for the neighborhood kids to celebrate the library’s 20th birthday, Planting Hope was officially included in the list of hundreds of NGOs shuttered by the Nicaraguan government. Police seized the library for the government. To this day, the building stands disused, empty of books, shelves, computers, and children. 

“What we will always have is the desire and the willingness to keep working for our people,” said Guerrero, who found herself suddenly unemployed. 

Getting a job usually depends on your standing with the ruling Sandinista party, according to other Nicaraguans interviewed for this article, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals should they have to return. Having worked for an American organization can brand you as unwanted, they said, and subject you to close scrutiny by the authorities. 

Between the 2018 government crackdown and the 2022 disbanding of Planting Hope, more than 250,000 Nicaraguans fled the country. 

On January 5, 2023, in the face of historic and sustained migrant encounters with Border Patrol at the U.S-Mexico border, the Biden administration announced the new program to allow nationals from four politically and economically unstable countries — Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela — to live and work in the U.S for two years. 

Called “humanitarian parole,” the idea was to provide a safe and legal pathway for migrants fleeing turmoil in their home countries, and ease the pressure on the border. But one requirement proved a major obstacle: the need for applicants to have an American sponsor commit to supporting them financially. 

Thomas and Kristen Dunn provided that crucial sponsorship support for Guerrero and her family in Montpelier. The Dunns had hosted Guerrero for a month in 2007, during a cultural exchange put together by Planting Hope.  

Last fall, three months after Guerrero arrived, Urbina followed with her husband and two sons, sponsored by Nathan Suter and Morgan Lloyd, who had visited Nicaragua in 2016 as part of one of Planting Hope’s service-learning trips. Suter and Lloyd moved Urbina and her family to an apartment they own in Montpelier, and have not charged them rent. 

Urbina remembers rushing home to tell her family after receiving an email from Suter and Lloyd offering to become sponsors: “I didn’t think twice when I saw it, I said ‘Yes!'” 

‘The most beautiful thing’

Life in America has been a vast improvement for both Urbina and Guerrero’s families. Firstly, in an economic sense: Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, according to the International Trade Administration. 

“Here, you have a chance. If you work, even if you don’t make much, you can pay rent and buy groceries,” said Guerrero, who worked as a Spanish teacher last year at Montpelier’s private Pacem School. 

But most important for the two women, as mothers, is what living in Vermont means for their children. 

Guerrero’s 7-year-old daughter Valentina has nonverbal autism. When the Nicaraguan government closed the nonprofit that provided care for her, Guerrero finally made up her mind to move to the United States. 

“I saw that her behavior began to regress,” said Guerrero. 

At Union Elementary School, Valentina has access to an occupational therapist, as well as swimming lessons, both of which Guerrero said have benefitted her enormously. 

And at Urbina’s house one morning, as her sons gathered in front of the TV and flicked on a baseball video game, she said she had lived something very similar. 

Her youngest son, Maynor, 14, was born with a form of cerebral palsy. Because he did not learn in the same way as other students, the teachers in Nicaragua did not let him move up the grade levels. Instead, he was sent to a school for kids with all sorts of disabilities.

“But here, all the teachers were open to getting to know him, to figuring out ways to help him,” said Urbina. 

Her son’s inclusion has extended outside of the classroom, too. In Montpelier, Maynor has played soccer, basketball, and most importantly, baseball. 

“I tried signing him up in Nicaragua, because he loves baseball. But the second I mentioned that he has a disability, they didn’t want him,” said Urbina. 

The crack of a bat, then the holler of a virtual crowd, sounded from the TV. The brothers laughed and cheered on the little pixelated batter running for first base. 

“The most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to him is the acceptance he’s had here,” said Urbina. 

Venezuelan bellwether

So what chance do Nicaraguans have of staying in the country?

According to Astrid Montealegre, an immigration lawyer and advisor for the Nicaraguan American Human Rights Alliance, there are essentially three options: a family petition, a work visa, or seeking asylum. 

But if a Nicaraguan person had a family member with permanent legal status in the U.S, they would have pursued that option before ever coming to the country with humanitarian parole, according to Montealegre. The other options, work visas and asylum claims, are complicated and expensive processes, with lawyer fees generally ranging from $3,000 to $5,000 per person. 

None of the Nicaraguans interviewed for this article were pursuing any of these three options. Instead, they all hoped that the Biden administration would extend the parole program. 

Montealegre agreed: “The most viable option for most Nicaraguans would be the establishment of a temporary protection status, practically an amnesty.” 

An extension would be in line with the Biden administration’s carrot-and-sticks policy, hardening border enforcement while simultaneously normalizing the status of noncitizens already in the country. Montealegre believes that Venezuelans will be a bellwether — they were the first beneficiaries of humanitarian parole in October 2022, and as such, will be the first ones to have their two-year stay expire. 

If the Biden administration does not extend the program for Venezuelans, Montealegre said it is highly unlikely they do so for Nicaraguans. The result, she feared, could be “hundreds of thousands of migrants suddenly cast into limbo,” with no legal basis to stay but unwilling to return to the countries in turmoil they left behind.  

That could spell disaster if Donald Trump is reelected in November, according to Montealegre, because the former president has repeatedly vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants. 

“We don’t know what will happen with Trump, he can do any crazy thing,” said Montealegre.

Guerrero puts it more bluntly: “If Trump wins, a la mierda. He’s going to kick us out.”

In the meantime, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly challenged the president’s parole authority. A Texas-led coalition of 21 Republican-leaning states took it to the courts, arguing that they were suffering financial harm from having to take in paroled migrants — though that lawsuit failed. And on Aug. 2, the Department of Homeland Security “temporarily paused” the program after concerns surfaced about fraud amongst financial sponsors.

“We haven’t come here to be a burden to the government, we’ve come here to work, to pay taxes,” said Guerrero. 

One year on in Vermont

Arriving home with Valentina from a summer camp one afternoon, Guerrero sighed. Her daughter buzzed about the kitchen, dragging toys and laughing, a ceaseless blur of motion and energy. 

Guerrero’s family had just reached a year of living in Vermont, but it was not an anniversary they would happily celebrate. 

“It’s horrible. They’re such mixed emotions. I want to see my family back home,” said Guerrero. 

Guerrero said they did not apply for asylum — though she believed it would have been granted — because to do so would have meant essentially renouncing on ever going back to Nicaragua. The thought of never seeing her parents again, or her friends, or her house in her native San Ramón, and the mangos and bananas she could pick from the trees in her garden, was too difficult to stomach. 

“Valentina,” Guerrero called, suddenly. “Do you want to put on your dress? The one abuela made for you?” 

Valentina nodded. And for a moment, as her mother slipped her into the traditional Nicaraguan folk dress in the blue and white colors of the Nicaraguan flag, Valentina became quiet and still. 

“Beautiful,” said Guerrero, kissing her. “Beautiful.” 

On a hill above Montpelier one recent evening, on the field of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Omar Montalván tried desperately to defend a soccer goal from the shots raining down from his two teenage sons. It was an all-star “Dad” performance, full of laughing taunts at his kids if they mis-kicked a ball, lots of pointing to his injured calf if they scored on him, and improbable yarns about sporting glories in his younger days. 

After work, if the weather’s fair, Montalván likes to take Dylan, 15, and Denzell, 14 — his and Moncada’s children — up here and kick the ball around for a couple hours. 

“I’m a family man, you know? The free time I have, I like to spend with my family,” he said. 

Having been here now longer than a year, Montalván is proud of how his family has adapted to America. After scoring plenty of goals with U32’s junior varsity soccer team last fall, Dylan was quickly promoted up to the varsity squad. Denzell was a star during the track and field season in the spring. 

The first to arrive, the Montalván family will also be the first whose two-year parole will be up. Considering the future, Montalván became thoughtful. Sometimes, he said, in the middle of a long, heavy work shift, or trying to find sleep at night, so many doubts assailed him at once that he despaired of ever making sense of things. 

“Sometimes I feel nostalgic. What am I doing here? This isn’t my country. I don’t speak the language.”

Across the darkening field, his two boys chased each other, shouting and running tirelessly after the ball. 

“But then I think of them. You do it for them. For their opportunities.” 

Montalván looked around at the fading outlines of the houses that faced the college green. 

“I like it here. The people are very close with their community, like at home. But if we can’t stay…”

He smiled: “I feel good. I feel ready. Whatever comes our way, we’ll be ready.”