SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — A group of families and children hailing from Uzbekistan, China, Afghanistan, Russia and more countries climbed down the stairs of an airplane in Costa Rica’s capital Thursday, the first flight of deportees from other nations Costa Rica agreed to hold in detention facilities for the Trump administration while it organized the return back to their countries.
The flight of 135 deportees, half of them minors, added Costa Rica to a growing list of Latin American nations to serve as a stopover for migrants as U.S. President Donald Trump ’s administration seeks to step up deportations.
While Costa Rica joins Panama in holding deportees from mostly Asian origin until their repatriation can be arranged or they can seek protection somewhere, Honduras on Thursday also facilitated a handoff of deportees between the U.S. and Venezuela from a flight coming from Guantanamo Bay.
The migrants arriving in Costa Rica will be bused to a rural holding facility near the Panama border, where they will be detained up to six weeks and be flown back to their countries of origin, said Omer Badilla, Costa Rica’s deputy minister of the interior and police. The U.S. government will cover the costs.
The arrangement is part of a deal the Trump administration struck with Costa Rica during U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit earlier this month. It comes as Trump has pressured countries across the region to help facilitate deportations at times under the threat of steep tariffs or sanctions.
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves told reporters Wednesday that his country is helping its “economically powerful brother from the north.”
Similar agreements have been reached with other Latin American nations, but the concept of using third countries as deportation layovers has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. Beyond the conditions of their detention in Costa Rica, concerns revolve around international protections for asylum seekers and whether these deportees will be appropriately screened before being returned to their countries or sent to yet another country.
Panama this week became the first such country to accept 299 deportees from other nations, with the government holding them in hotel rooms guarded by police. About one-third of those who refused to voluntarily return to their countries were sent to a remote camp in Darien province bordering Colombia on Wednesday. The rest were awaiting commercial flights back home.
“We’ve thrown out the possibility of a hotel, precisely to avoid a situation similar to that in Panama,” Badilla, the Costa Rican official, told The Associated Press.
Honduras said Thursday it also acted as a brief stopover for a deportation flight of Venezuelans coming from Guantanamo Bay in what it described as a “humanitarian bridge” since there are no direct flights between the U.S. and Venezuela.
A U.S. flight carrying 170 Venezuelans landed Thursday in a joint U.S.-Honduran military base in central Honduras, and within hours were transferred to a Venezuelan aircraft. An official with Honduras’ foreign ministry said this was not a routine arrangement, but that the Central American nation remains open to facilitating more transfers between the two adversaries.
Badilla said that Thursday’s deportation flight from San Diego is largely made up of families, including 65 children, two pregnant women and an elderly woman. He said Costa Rica was told by the Trump administration that most of the deportees have agreed to voluntarily return to their countries.
If they refuse, Costa Rica is open to offering deportees refuge or will work with the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, IOM, to facilitate travel to another third country.
“Costa Rica is a country that guarantees human rights,” he said. “We are going to guarantee that they are returned to safe countries. We cannot leave that to chance because of an ethical and moral commitment of our country.”
In the meantime, migrants will be detained in the border facility, where they will be accompanied by U.N. officials, the Red Cross and other aid-focused government entities to “guarantee their rights,” Badilla said.
The facility being used to hold migrants, a former factory, has faced criticisms for its conditions in the past.
During a visit by the AP in October 2023, migrants were fenced off in cramped facilities and said they felt like “prisoners.” Many slept in tents on the ground, where some said liquid from portable toilets leaked. Badilla said that facilities have since been improved, but the government has denied journalists access to the building.
The facility will also be processing a “reverse flow” of migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador that previously sought asylum in the U.S. and now want to return home. Badilla said Costa Rica has seen between 50 and 75 migrants headed south entering the country a day.
IOM said in a statement to the AP that “we do not have direct involvement in the detention or restriction of movement of individuals” and that it was providing humanitarian support and supporting voluntary returns to their countries and “identifying safe alternatives for others.”
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Associated Press reporter María Verza contributed to this report from Mexico City.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america