PARIS (AP) — UNESCO on Sunday announced the withdrawal of Nicaragua from the U.N. cultural and educational body because of the awarding of a UNESCO prize celebrating press freedom to a Nicaraguan newspaper, La Prensa.

UNESCO’s director general, Audrey Azoulay, announced that she had received a letter Sunday morning from the Nicaraguan government announcing its withdrawal because of the attribution of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

“I regret this decision, which will deprive the people of Nicaragua of the benefits of cooperation, particularly in the fields of education and culture. UNESCO is fully within its mandate when it defends freedom of expression and press freedom around the world,” Azoulay said in a statement.

Nicaragua was one of 194 member states in the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO members set up the press freedom prize in 1997, and the 2025 award was attributed Saturday to La Prensa on the recommendation of an international jury of media professionals.

La Prensa was founded almost a century ago, in 1926, UNESCO noted.

It said that “since 2021, following the imprisonment and expulsion of its leaders from the country as well as the confiscation of its assets, La Prensa has continued to inform the Nicaraguan population online, with most of its team in exile and operating from Costa Rica, Spain, Mexico, Germany and the United States.”

In announcing their UNESCO withdrawal, Nicaraguan authorities accused La Prensa of promoting “military and political interventions by the United States in Nicaragua” and denounced the award of the prize as the “diabolical expression of a traitorous anti-patriotic sentiment,” UNESCO said.

Nicaragua’s angry departure is a blow for the organization that is also in the crosshairs of U.S. President Donald Trump.

In an executive order in February, Trump called for a review of American involvement in UNESCO. In his first term as president, the Trump administration in 2017 announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision took effect a year later.

The United States formally rejoined UNESCO in 2023 after a five-year absence, under the presidency of Joe Biden.

MIAMI (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it will revoke legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in about a month.

The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022. They arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.

The new policy impacts people who are already in the U.S. and who came under the humanitarian parole program. It follows an earlier Trump administration decision to end what it called the “broad abuse” of the humanitarian parole, a long-standing legal tool presidents have used to allow people from countries where there’s war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the U.S.

During his campaign President Donald Trump promised to deport millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally, and as president he has been also ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the U.S. and to stay.

DHS said parolees without a lawful basis to stay in the U.S. “must depart” before their parole termination date.

“Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status,” DHS said.

Before the new order, the beneficiaries of the program could stay in the U.S. until their parole expires, although the administration had stopped processing their applications for asylum, visas and other requests that might allow them to remain longer.

The administration decision has already been challenged in federal courts.

A group of American citizens and immigrants sued the Trump administration for ending humanitarian parole and are seeking to reinstate the programs for the four nationalities.

Lawyers and activists raised their voices to denounce the government’s decision.

Friday’s action is “going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country,” said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit at the end of February. She called it “reckless, cruel and counterproductive.”

The Biden administration allowed up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries to come to the United States for two years with eligibility to work. It persuaded Mexico to take back the same number from those countries because the U.S. could deport few, if any, to their homes.

Cuba generally accepted about one deportation flight a month, while Venezuela and Nicaragua refused to take any. All three are U.S. adversaries.

Haiti accepted many deportation flights, especially after a surge of migrants from the Caribbean country in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas, in 2021. But Haiti has been in constant turmoil, hampering U.S. efforts.

Since late 2022, more than half a million people have come to the U.S. under the policy, also known as CHNV. It was a part of the Biden administration’s approach to encourage people to come through new legal channels while cracking down on those who crossed the border illegally.

AP editor Elliot Spagat and writer Tim Sullivan contributed to this report.