Costa Rica
Last updated December 5, 2025
Agreement Date: April 3, 2025
Agreement: Transfers in February 2025 took place without a written agreement. A formal agreement was signed in April 2025 and made public several months later.
Transfers: 200 people were expelled to Costa Rica in February 2025; no transfers have been reported since.
U.S. Litigation: RAICES v. Noem
In February 2025, the United States expelled 200 people, including 81 children and 2 pregnant women, on two flights to Costa Rica. Many 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.
Upon arrival in Costa Rica, individuals were transported by bus from San Jose to a remote detention facility called CATEM near the Panamanian border. They were not provided with information in their languages, or needed medical and psychological services. People reported difficult conditions in detention including extreme heat, mosquitoes, and limited access to water and inadequate food. Facing coercive and inhumane conditions of detention in Costa Rica, many expelled individuals, including one of the pregnant women, returned to their home country. Other individuals remain in Costa Rica but are separated from their immediate family members (spouses, parents, and children) who have ongoing asylum cases in the United States. Still others “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. Costa Rica reportedly received the asylum seekers and migrants “in good faith” in order to facilitate their return to their countries of origin 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). IOM was tasked with facilitating returns of individuals to their home countries with funds that may have been diverted from congressional appropriations for migration and refugee assistance.
The legality of these expulsions has been challenged in both the United States and Costa Rica and before international bodies. 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 detained asylum seekers and migrants 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 since February, and the ability to apply for asylum in the country – although they were not allowed to work and had to pay a fee to obtain temporary legal status.
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 the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia partially stayed the decision pending appeal. The order continues to bar expulsion of asylum seekers without a screening for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture. The court has not yet ruled on relief for people already illegally expelled to third countries under the Proclamation, though the litigation is ongoing.
The United States and Costa Rica formalized an agreement on April 3rd 2025, which was posted months later on the State department’s non-binding agreement website. The agreement provides U.S. diplomatic and monetary support to facilitate deportations from Costa Rica to third countries, including via U.S. chartered flights and/or U.S. purchased commercial tickets, and provides for continued transfers 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. 7.85 million USD for this will come from the State Department’s Economic Support Fund. Transfers under this agreement have not been publicly reported or documented.
The United States and Costa Rica share long-standing diplomatic and economic ties, with the U.S. serving as Costa Rica’s largest trading partner and a key source of development support. In accepting the February 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 a possible exemption from new tariffs on key agricultural exports if it addresses trade and security concerns.