The Central American country is the latest country to sign a “third country” deportation agreement as part of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Published March 26, 2026
Costa Rica has announced it will accept 25 immigrants a week forcibly returned from the United States as part of a deal to support President Donald Trump’s policy of deporting immigrants to “third countries.”
The Central American country joins a growing number of countries in Africa and the Americas that have entered into controversial and often secret agreements with the United States to accept deportees from other countries.
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In many cases, critics say, immigrants who previously sought asylum in the United States are stranded in a legal “black hole” in a foreign country where they don’t speak the language.
Countries that have agreed to accept third-party migrants include South Sudan, Honduras, Rwanda, Guyana, and several Caribbean islands such as Dominica and St. Kitts and Nevis.
“Costa Rica is ready to see this flow of people,” Costa Rica’s Public Security Minister Mario Zamora Cordero said in a video statement Thursday.
The Costa Rican government signed the agreement on Monday during a visit by US envoy Kristi Noem, who was recently appointed to oversee the so-called “Shield of the Americas.”
Noem, who was fired as Secretary of Homeland Security earlier this month, has been traveling throughout Latin America, including recent stops in Guyana and Ecuador.
“I’m very proud to have partners like the President (Rodrigo Chavez) and Costa Rica who are working to ensure that people who are in our country illegally have a chance to return to their home countries,” Noem said Monday.
The Costa Rican government calls the agreement a “non-binding migration agreement.”
He also said the deal would allow the Trump administration to deport foreign nationals who are not Costa Rican citizens to the Central American country.
The Government of Costa Rica also reserves the right to accept or reject any proposed transfer.
The report said deportees would be treated under special immigration status under Costa Rica’s immigration laws, and the country would avoid deporting people to countries where they could face the risk of persecution.
Such “third country” deportations have been heavily criticized for putting vulnerable people at further risk, sometimes sending them to dangerous countries or places where they face risks.
Costa Rica has already been mired in controversy over its treatment of the 200 deportees it took in last year from countries including Russia, China, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
The deportees, nearly half of them minors, had their passports confiscated and were held for months in a rural detention center near the Panama border, spurring lawsuits and accusations of human rights abuses. The country’s Supreme Court ordered their release in June last year.
Many deportees, who said they were too scared to return to their home countries, were later granted temporary permission to stay in Costa Rica. Panama, which detained hundreds of deportees during the same period, faced similar criticism.
Zamora vowed on Thursday that the new deportees would be held in better conditions.
He added that the Costa Rican government will work with the United States to bring migrants home and with the United Nations International Organization for Migration to house deportees. He did not immediately provide details about where he was detained or for how long.
“This will ensure that they remain in the best possible condition during their stay in Costa Rica and have a safe return to their country of origin,” Zamora said.
At least seven African countries have agreements with the United States to facilitate the deportation of third-country nationals, a move that legal experts say is effectively a way to circumvent laws that prohibit states from sending people to places where their lives are threatened.
Lawyers say many of the deportees had received legal protections from U.S. judges that prevented them from being sent back to their home countries.
The Trump administration spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 immigrants to countries other than their own, according to a February report by Democratic staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
