Costa Rica

Ongoing forced transfers pursuant to March 2026 agreement:

IIn March of 2026, the Costa Rican government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United States, agreeing to accept the transfer of 25-third country nationals per week. The MOU does not stipulate any specific nationalities, only stating that it is at the discretion of the Costa Rican government whom they accept. The MOU also states the government of the United States will provide funding to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide services to those transferred. 

As of July 24, 2026, 14 flights carrying third country nationals have arrived in Costa Rica under this agreement. Flights arrived on April 11, April 17, April 24, May 15, May 21, May 28, and June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, July 2, July 9, July 16, and July 24. The official Costa Rican government registry documents 290 people transferred on these flights: 3 Albanian nationals, 3 Argentinian nationals, 3 Azerbaijani nationals, 1 Belarusian national, 6 Bolivian nationals, 43 Brazilian nationals, 6 Cameroonian nationals, 1 Chilean national, 49 Chinese nationals, 48 Colombian nationals, 12 Ecuadorian nationals, 1 French national, 13 Guatemalan nationals, 9 Honduran nationals, 12 Indian nationals, 1 Irish national, 1 Kenyan national, 1 Kyrgyz national, 2 Moroccan nationals, 2 Mauritanian nationals, 1 Nepalese national, 1 Paraguayan national, 4 Peruvian nationals, 2 nationals from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2 nationals from the Dominican Republic, 5 Romanian nationals, 3 Russian nationals, 3 Senegalese nationals, 1 Tanzanian national, 4 Turkish nationals, 9 Uzbek nationals, and 11 Vietnamese nationals. The Costa Rican government has registered that 121 people have left Costa Rica, 21 are in the process of AVR (assisted voluntary return, which is repatriation with help from IOM), and 267 remain in the country.

Some of those transferred were processed through expedited removal in the United States and had no opportunity for a full hearing on their asylum claim with an immigration judge. Many transferred people Refugees International has interviewed in Costa Rica expressed fears of serious harm if they were to return to their home countries, including political persecution, targeting by the police, and possible assassination.

The IOM is providing humanitarian aid, including hotel stay, for those who have been transferred, and offering Assisted Voluntary Return. The Costa Rican government has stated that individuals will also have the opportunity to seek asylum or obtain a temporary humanitarian status. Initially, the Costa Rican Human Rights Ombudsman was not granted access to review the conditions and accommodations of the people transferred. Eventually the Ombusdman was granted access along with Costa Rica’s National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture, and observed that people were allowed freedom of movement and had received information in their languages. However, the monitors noted several concerns, including insufficient inter-institutional coordination in Costa Rica, that those transferred had been subject to cruel treatment in the United States, and that the agreement should not only focus on their treatment in Costa Rica, but rather to ensure people are not sent back to unsafe conditions in their country of origin. Recently, monitoring conducted by Refugees International and on the ground local partners have noted that many deported individuals are not provided with sufficient information regarding the asylum process in Costa Rica, nor the humanitarian status, generating confusion among the individuals. Those with humanitarian status are not automatically given an identity document to allow them to work, leading many to try  to find informal work. Others with serious international protection concerns felt dissuaded from applying for asylum because they were separated from family in the United States. While the Costa Rican government was officially providing a one year humanitarian status to all who entered, monitoring done the week of July 9th found that new African deportees from various countries were only given a tourist visa.

While treatment and conditions have improved for those transferred in 2026 compared to 2025 (discussed below), individuals sent to Costa Rica still remain in limbo as none have ties to Costa Rica, the vast majority do not speak the language, and some remain indefinitely separated from family members in the United States including their children or spouses. Over 40 civil society organizations have expressed serious concerns about the risks of chain refoulement posed by this agreement. Transfers are ongoing. 

Forced transfers in February 2025 pursuant to unwritten agreement:

In February 2025, the United States expelled 200 people, including 81 children and 2 pregnant women, on two flights to Costa Rica. Many of those expelled had tried to seek asylum in the United States but were detained and expelled without a protection screening under the authority of President Trump’s January 20, 2025 Proclamation that suspended asylum access at the border. The group included people from Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Nepal, the Republic of Congo, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen. Human Rights First, Refugees International, and Human Rights Watch have documented numerous cases of asylum seekers expelled to Costa Rica under the Proclamation without a screening on their claim despite expressing fear of return, including those fleeing political and religious persecution.

Upon arrival in Costa Rica, individuals were transported by bus from San Jose to a remote detention facility called Centro de Atención Temporal a Migrantes (CATEM) near the Panamanian border. They were not given adequate interpretation support or necessary medical and psychological services. Facing coercive and inhumane conditions of detention in Costa Rica – including extreme heat, mosquitoes, and limited access to water and inadequate food – many expelled individuals, including one of the pregnant women, returned to their home country. Other individuals remained in Costa Rica, separated from their immediate family members (spouses, parents, and children) who have ongoing asylum cases in the United States. Some “escaped” from the CATEM or migrated north again, hoping to try again to seek asylum in the United States and reunite with relatives.

At the time of the February transfers, there was no formal written agreement between the United States and Costa Rica. However, Costa Rica issued a resolution in its Gaceta Nacional stating that third country nationals would be received on a temporary basis with the sole purpose of facilitating their transfer to their home countries or another country. The President of Costa Rica confirmed that the United States would completely finance the process under the supervision of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Through a freedom of information request,  Refugees International received a copy of a March 14, 2025 letter to the Costa Rican Minister of Foreign Affairs from the U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America confirming that the U.S. “defray[ed] the costs of hosting third country aliens deported to Costa Rica,” including food, healthcare, interpretation services, access to information about assisted return to their countries of origin, and such “return flights” for 51 of the third country nationals transferred by the United States to Costa Rica. Other documents released to Refugees International through FOIA indicate that IOM was tasked with facilitating returns of individuals to their home countries with funds from congressional appropriations for migration and refugee assistance. 

The treatment of these individuals has been challenged in both the United States and Costa Rica and before international bodies. The detention of people forcibly sent to Costa Rica was appealed to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and before the UN committee that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In response to this pressure, on April 21, 2025, the Costa Rican government published a resolution providing the people expelled from the United States with temporary legal status for three months with the possibility to extend another three months, the freedom to leave the facility where they had been detained, and the ability to apply for asylum in the country. On January 5, 2026 the Costa Rican government extended this resolution an additional year. 

In response to a lawsuit brought by lawyers and Costa Rican civil society organizations, Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court ruled in June 2025 that the prolonged detention of asylum seekers in Costa Rica constituted a violation of their right to personal liberty. The Court mandated the government to assess and provide the necessary health care, education, housing, and social assistance required to support their well-being, and compensate the individuals for the harm caused by their unlawful detention. A Costa Rican judge wrote of the asylum seekers expelled to Costa Rica: “In the 54 years of my career, I had never seen a case that was so damaging to people’s fundamental rights, especially dignity and freedom.” By that point, many of the 200 individuals had been returned to their home countries, and 28 remained at CATEM.

In July 2025, in RAICES v. Noem, a U.S. federal district court for the District of Columbia vacated as unlawful the January 20, 2025 Proclamation that suspended access to asylum at the border and under which authority the United States conducted many of the expulsions to Costa Rica. The government appealed, and on August 1 the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia partially stayed the decision pending appeal, barring the U.S. government from expelling asylum seekers without a screening for withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture but leaving the Proclamation’s ban on asylum in effect. On April 24, 2026, the Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling, affirming that the Proclamation “cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum or withholding of removal protections.” The ruling does not take effect right away and the government has stated that it will seek review of the decision. The district court has not yet ruled on relief for people already illegally expelled to third countries under the Proclamation. 

Following the February 2025 transfers, the United States and Costa Rica formalized an agreement on April 3, 2025, which was posted months later on the State Department’s non-binding agreement website. The agreement provides diplomatic and monetary support from the United States to facilitate deportations from Costa Rica to third countries, including via flights chartered by the United States and/or commercial tickets purchased by the United States, and provides for the continued transfer of third country nationals from the United States to Costa Rica. Regarding the latter, the agreement specifies that Costa Rica reserves the right to “establish criteria or parameters” of those people it will receive. Following the agreement, Costa Rica received $9.5 million USD for deportation assistance. Transfers under this agreement have not been publicly reported or documented. The nationalities of those individuals that could be subjected to this agreement, as well as any related quotas, are unknown. 

The United States and Costa Rica share long-standing diplomatic and economic ties, with the United States serving as Costa Rica’s largest trading partner and a key source of development support. In accepting the February 2025 flights, the President of Costa Rica said: “We are helping the economically powerful brother to the north [the United States], who if they impose a tax in our free [trade] zones, it’ll screw us.” On September 5, President Trump signed an executive order offering Costa Rica and other countries certain exemptions from new tariffs on key agricultural exports only if it addressed trade and security concerns. These tariffs were lifted on November 14, 2025. The security situation in some areas of Costa Rica is deteriorating–prompting the landslide election of incoming right-wing president Laura Fernandez who ran on an anti-crime platform, promising to complete  the building of a new maximum security prisonknown as the Center for High Containment of Organized Crime (CACCO), modeled after the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in El Salvador. A symbol of the increasing overlap of immigration enforcement and U.S foreign policy, Kristi Noem’s last act as Secretary of DHS while also serving as the new “Shield of the Americas” envoy at the State Department, was to discuss security cooperation and sign a new third country national deportation agreement with outgoing President Chaves and incoming President Fernandez.