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The Costa Rican government has agreed to receive up to 25 deported migrants a week from the United States, the latest deal in the Trump administration\u2019s unprecedented efforts to deport scores of people to \u201cthird countries\u201d.<\/p>\n
With the new agreement, Costa Rica seeks a closer alliance with Donald Trump\u2019s government, which has been securing cooperation from other Central American countries<\/a> in accepting deportees from other nations who have been detained by US immigration agents.<\/p>\n \u201cCosta Rica feels obligated to reciprocate at a time when the United States and its immigration services need the humanitarian cooperation of Costa Rican authorities,\u201d the minister of public security, Mario Zamora, said in a video statement to the Guardian.<\/p>\n \u201cWith financial support from the United States, they will be provided with housing and food on Costa Rican soil. Costa Rican immigration authorities will collaborate with US immigration<\/a> authorities to carry out all the necessary immigration logistics to guarantee the return of these individuals to their countries.\u201d<\/p>\n Zamora said the agreement was voluntary, maintaining that the Costa Rican government had the discretion to decide the number of deportees it will accept, as well as their nationality.<\/p>\n The Costa Rican ministry of public security said last week that the country would only receive deported migrants who do not hail from Latin America or any nation that refuses to take back their citizens, according to local reports<\/a>. Zamora noted Costa Rica will only receive migrants without criminal records.<\/p>\n According to the agreement shared with the Guardian, the US government will provide information about the individuals it intends to deport to Costa Rica 48 hours before a deportation flight. Upon their arrival, the Costa Rican government will give them a limited legal status on humanitarian grounds.<\/p>\n The accord was signed during a visit by Kristi Noem, the recently departed homeland security secretary who is now overseeing the \u201cShield of the Americas\u201d initiative, which the Trump administration says is designed to eradicate criminal cartels in the western hemisphere.<\/p>\n Any US deportations to Costa Rica would be carried out by the Department of Homeland Security. The department did not respond to requests from the Guardian for details about how the removals would work.<\/p>\n In a statement, the US Department of State said \u201cimplementing the Trump Administration\u2019s immigration policies is a top priority for the Department of State. As Secretary [Marco] Rubio has said, we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America\u2019s border security.\u201d<\/p>\n The International Organization for Migration<\/a> (IOM), an agency within the United Nations, is expected to provide assistance to deportees upon their arrival. A spokesperson for the organization said in a statement: \u201cWhere engaged, our support focuses on providing basic services and helping individuals navigate a limited set of options, including whether to remain, return to their country of origin, or pursue other available pathways.\u201d<\/p>\n The Costa Rican government is expected to meet with US authorities and IOM officials this week to determine where the deportees will be transferred once they arrive on Costa Rican soil, Zamora said.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s expanding use of \u201cthird country\u201d deportations has come under intensifying scrutiny by Democratic lawmakers in Congress. In February, Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee published a report<\/a> detailing \u201chow the Trump Administration\u2019s secret deportation deals are undermining US interests and coming at great cost to taxpayers\u201d.<\/p>\n Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire who commissioned the report, said<\/a>, \u201cthrough its third country deportation deals, the Trump Administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments, while turning a blind eye to the human costs and potentially undermining our diplomatic relationships. For an Administration that claims to be reining in fraud, waste and abuse, this policy is the epitome of all three.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration has spent at least $40m <\/a>to deport migrants to countries that are not their own, the report found. A congressional aide involved in the report said the state department was not tracking what happens to those deported to third countries.<\/p>\n The Trump administration secured a deal with Costa Rica<\/a> last year that allowed the US to send roughly 200 deportees to the Central American nation. The group of asylum seekers, which included 81 children from different countries in Asia and Africa, were flown to Costa Rica in chains after being denied a chance to request protection on US soil. Nearly 300 other African and Asian migrants<\/a> were deported to Panama around the same time.<\/p>\n A congressional aide added that the estimated cost for the roundtrip deportation flights to Costa Rica and Panama in February 2025 totaled about $1.4m.<\/a><\/p>\n The Costa Rican government claimed at the time that it would be a temporary safe haven to the deportees and help them return to their home countries. But interviews from those deported to Costa Rica contradict these promises.<\/p>\n \u201cThey threw us out like baggage to a country with a language we don\u2019t speak. And no one was held accountable for this,\u201d said a Russian man<\/a> who remains in Costa Rica with his wife and child more than a year after their deportation.<\/p>\n The deportations to Costa Rica were part of the many high-profile operations in the early days of the second Trump administration, which moved swiftly to unleash its anti-immigration and mass deportation agenda.<\/p>\n