Costa Rica introduced on Monday that it might obtain a flight this week from america carrying 200 migrants from Central Asia and India, making it the second nation in Central America to simply accept deportees from faraway nations who had crossed illegally into america.
Final week, Panama received three U.S. deportation flights, carrying migrants from nations in Asia, the Center East and Africa.
Such flights look like the Trump administration’s new tactic for coping with unauthorized migrants from nations to which it won’t be simple to return them, because the administration seeks to ramp up deportations. Somewhat than hold such migrants in detention facilities on the southern border, the administration is recruiting different nations prepared to simply accept them, the place it’s not clear what is going to in the end occur to the deportees.
Whereas touring by way of Central America and the Caribbean earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio acquired assurances from a number of governments, together with Panama’s and Costa Rica’s, that they had been dedicated to working with the Trump administration on migration points. However few particulars had been provided.
In its Monday announcement, the Costa Rican authorities mentioned the primary group of deportees would arrive on a industrial flight on Wednesday afternoon.
Costa Rica mentioned its territory would “function a bridge” for the migrants’ return to their nations of origin, and that the repatriation course of could be “absolutely funded by the U.S. authorities, beneath the supervision of the Worldwide Group for Migration,” a United Nations company that Costa Rica mentioned could be chargeable for the care of the migrants throughout their keep within the nation. Panama has described the same course of for the deportees despatched there by america.
The U.N. company’s representatives in Costa Rica didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
After arriving in the primary airport serving San José, the capital, the deportees will likely be transported to a migrant shelter within the canton of Corredores, within the nation’s south, Costa Rica mentioned.
Costa Rican officers didn’t say what number of migrants they anticipated america to in the end ship, or how lengthy they’d stay in Costa Rica earlier than being despatched to their nations of origin.
Not way back, Costa Rica was grappling with how to deal with thousands of migrants passing by way of on their solution to the U.S. border. Its shelters had been crowded with individuals who, in lots of instances, had handed by way of the perilous Darién Gap, between Colombia and Panama, to achieve Central America.
Within the final 12 months, the variety of migrants passing by way of Costa Rica has dropped dramatically as america, Mexico and Panama have hardened their borders and enhanced immigration enforcement.
