Costa Rica to accept 25 deportees per week under Trump deportation effort 

Costa Rica has announced it will accept 25 migrants deported from the United States per week as part of an agreement to assist with President Donald Trump’s policy of deporting immigrants to “third countries”.

The Central American nation joins a growing number of countries across Africa and the Americas that have signed contentious, often secretive agreements with the US to accept deportees from other countries.

In many cases, critics say migrants who previously hoped to seek asylum in the US are left in a legal “black hole” in foreign countries where they don’t speak the language.

Countries who have agreed to receive third-party migrants include South Sudan, Honduras, Rwanda, Guyana and several Caribbean islands like Dominica and St Kitts and Nevis.

“Costa Rica is prepared to see this flow of people,” said Costa Rican Public Security Minister Mario Zamora Cordero in a video statement on Thursday.

Costa Rica’s government signed the pact on Monday during a visit from US special envoy Kristi Noem, who was recently named to oversee the so-called “Shield of the Americas”.

Noem, who was fired earlier this month from her role as secretary of Homeland Security, has been travelling through Latin America, with recent stops in Guyana and Ecuador.

“We are very proud to have partners like President [Rodrigo Chaves] and Costa Rica, who are working to ensure that people who are in our country illegally have the opportunity to return to their countries of origin,” Noem said on Monday.

Costa Rica’s government has called the pact a “non-binding migration agreement”.

It also said the deal allows the Trump administration to transfer foreign nationals – who are not Costa Rican citizens – to the Central American nation.

The Costa Rican government also reserves the right to accept or reject proposed transfers.

It said the deportees will be processed under Costa Rica’s migration laws under a special migratory status and that the country will avoid returning people to countries where they might face risk of persecution.

Such “third-country” transfers have been sharply criticised for putting vulnerable populations further at risk and in some cases sending them to dangerous nations or where they face risk.

Costa Rica has already faced controversy for its treatment of the 200 deportees from countries like Russia, China, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan it received last year.

The deportees, half of whom were minors, had their passports seized and were locked up for months in a rural detention facility near the Panama border, an incident that fueled lawsuits and accusations of human rights abuses. The country’s supreme court ordered their release last June.

Many deportees who said they were too scared to return to their home country were later given temporary permits to stay in Costa Rica. Panama, which locked up hundreds of deportees around the same time, came under similar criticism.

Zamora on Thursday made assurances that the new round of deportees would be held in better conditions.

He added that the Costa Rican government would work with the US to return migrants back to their countries and with the United Nations International Organization for Migration to house deportees. He didn’t immediately detail where they would be held or for how long.

“This will ensure they remain in the best possible conditions while in Costa Rica and guarantee their safe return to their countries of origin,” Zamora said.

At least seven African nations have signed deals with the US to facilitate deportations of third-country nationals, which legal experts said are effectively a way to circumvent laws that forbid countries from sending people to places where their lives would be threatened.

Many deportees received legal protection from US judges shielding them against being returned to their home countries, their lawyers said.

The Trump administration has spent at least $40m to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a February report by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.