Migrants from around the world — including dozens of children — landed on Thursday evening in San José, Costa Rica’s capital, after having been deported from the United States for illegally crossing the southern border.
Their plane was the first such flight to arrive in Costa Rica and carried the latest group of migrants from countries in the Eastern Hemisphere to be deported by the United States to Central America — a new tactic in the Trump administration’s crackdown on migration.
Last week, three flights were sent to Panama with people from countries such as China and Iran, where arranging deportations is more complicated for the United States because of a lack of diplomatic relations with their governments or other roadblocks.
In Panama, the migrants managed to communicate with reporters from The New York Times while being held in a hotel, drawing attention to their uncertain situation. Some said they had left their countries to escape persecution and feared for their safety if they were to be sent back.
Thursday, when the plane landed at Juan Santamaría International Airport outside San José, a group of reporters that had gathered on the tarmac captured images of the migrants on board.
They held their cellphones to the windows, revealing both that they were not in handcuffs and had not had their devices taken away.
Officials said 135 people were on the flight: 65 children and 70 adults, including one older person and two pregnant women. “They are all families; they come as family units,” said Omer Badilla, the deputy minister of governance and director of Costa Rica’s migration authority.
Another 65 migrants would be arriving to the country in the coming days, Mr. Badilla said, noting that Costa Rica had committed to receiving 200 migrants in total.
The flight carried people from more than a dozen nations, officials said. More than half of the group was from just a few countries: Uzbekistan, China and Armenia.
There were also people on board from Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Russia and Georgia.
Asked by a reporter what would happen to the people who refused to be returned to their country of origin, Mr. Badilla said: “Most, or almost all, want to return to their countries. Specific cases will be addressed if there is a particular request.”
He said: “This is simply a request from the United States for collaboration. We understand that they already were in the deportation process, and what the U.S. is doing is seeking an ally to assist in supplying a platform for transporting them to their countries.”
The plane was surrounded by about 20 police officers. The deportees were disembarked at a distance from the scrum of reporters and immediately boarded onto several buses marked “tourism” that were waiting on the runway.
When Costa Rica’s president, Rodrigo Chaves, spoke of the flight at a news conference this week, he said his country’s government had felt compelled to accept the deportees in particular because they included children.
Read more via The New York Times