Officials in Costa Rica and Panama are confiscating migrants’ passports and cell phones, denying their access to legal services and moving them between remote posts as they fight the logistics of abruptly reversing the migration flow.
In the first month, the Trump administration ordered the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare for immigration facilities in Guantanamo Bay, although so far only a few have sent it to the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which has been a foreign terrorism suspect in high-level U.S. prisons for two decades.
The government has also reached agreements with Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador to act as stopovers or destinations for immigrants deported from the United States, but has not detailed the agreements to the public, raising concerns about escaping international protections for refugees and asylum seekers.
Panama and Costa Rica are long-distance transport countries for north-facing immigrants, and have scrambled to resolve new migrations and organized movements.
But now, as President Donald Trump’s administration attempts to speed up deportation, both countries have received hundreds of deportations from various U.S. countries. Meanwhile, thousands of immigrants were locked up in the United States and began traveling across Central America – Panama recorded 2,200 so far in February.
“We reflect current U.S. immigration policy,” said Harold Villegas-Roman, a political science professor and refugee expert at the University of Costa Rica. “There is no focus on human rights, only on control and security. Everything is blurry and opaque.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth talked to Fox News analyst Will on January 29, 2025 about U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming plans to prepare an immigration facility for Guantanamo Bay, with tens of thousands of immigrants. Although Trump said the U.S. would “detain the most serious illegal foreigners threatening the American people,” the facility will be separated from the detention center.
Probably not the final destination
Earlier this month, the United States sent 299 deportations from Asian countries to Panama. Those willing to return to their country (about 150 so far) take flights with the assistance of UN agencies and pay for them by the United States
Panama Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ruiz-Hernandez said on Thursday that a few people were in contact with international organizations and the UN Refugee Agency because they weighed whether to seek asylum in Panama.
“None of them want to stay in Panama. They want to go to the United States,” he said in a telephone interview in Washington. “We can’t give them green cards, but we can take them home and provide them with medical and psychological support and housing in a very short time.”
Although Trump threatened to regain control of the Panama Canal, he said Panama was not acting under pressure from the United States.
“It’s in the national interest of Panama. We are friends of the United States and want to send a deterrent signal with them.”
Ruiz-Hernandez said some of the remaining deportees in Panama could choose to stay in the shelter originally set up to handle the large number of immigrants, thus moving north to the Darien gap.
Currently, a Chinese deported person has been detained in a camp, who avoids an impact while anonymously, said she has no choice.
She was deported to Panama, not knowing where they were sent without having to sign deportation documents in the United States without clearly knowing that they would be there. She was one of the expelled people who moved from the Panama City Hotel, where some people reached out to the windows to seek help from a remote camp in the Darian area.
She said she hid news from a cell phone, saying authorities confiscated other people’s cell phones and provided no legal aid. Others said they were unable to contact the attorney.
“This deprives us of legal proceedings,” she said.
In a White House briefing Tuesday, News Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration considers any immigrant who illegally enters the United States to be a “criminal.”
Panama President Jose Raul Mulino asked about the lack of opportunities for legal services on Thursday, questioning the idea that immigration would even have lawyers.
“Panama cannot ultimately be a black hole for deported immigrants,” said Juan Pappier, deputy director of the American Human Rights Watch. “Immigrants have the right to communicate with their families and seek lawyers, and Panama must ensure transparency about their situations that they find themselves.”
Venezuelan immigrants feel “despair”
Meanwhile, Costa Rica faces criticism from the country’s independent human rights entity that has raised an alarm from authorities about “failure” to ensure appropriate conditions for deportation. The Ombudsman’s Office said the immigrants were also deprived of their passports and other documents and did not inform them of what was happening or where to go.
Kimberlyn Pereira is a 27-year-old Venezuela who travels with her husband and four-year-old son.
Pereira has been waiting for months to appoint asylum in Mexico after crossing the dangerous Darien gap that divides Colombia and Panama. But after Trump took office and closed the legal path to the United States, she gave up and decided to go home despite the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.
But she expressed “despair” after being held in a Costa Rican detention center near the Panama border for a week.
Officials there told them they will be taken to the Colombian city of Cucuta, near the Venezuelan border. But they were loaded onto the bus and drove to the Panama port in the Caribbean.
Before dawn on Thursday, Pereira and other immigrants boarded wooden boats and took them near the Colombia-Panama border, where they planned to continue their trip. They paid the equivalent of $200 for the trip.
