(21 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
San Jose – 20 February 2025
1. Various of flight of U.S. deportees landing
2. Various of people looking through plane windows
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Omer Badilla, Costa Rica’s deputy minister of the interior and police:
"(The flight) is carrying 135 people. Of those 135 people, 65 are children and 70 adults. Most of them are families."
4. Various of police near plane on tarmac
5. Officers with rifles
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Omer Badilla, Costa Rica’s deputy minister of the interior and police:
"They (U.S. deportees) will be put on a bus, all primary care will be provided, there will be interpreters, and medical attention and health services will be guaranteed. There will be psychological support if necessary."
7. Migrants getting off plane then boarding bus, seen from behind
8. Bus leaving
9. Pan of police walking on tarmac
10. Police standing in formation
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Esteban Vargas Ramírez, head of Costa Rica’s torture prevention body:
"We are talking about (deportees’) rights which must be guaranteed — their physical, mental and emotional integrity."
12. Bus leaving
13. Buses and police vehicles leaving
14. Police vehicles ++ NIGHT SHOT ++
STORYLINE:
Costa Rica received Thursday the first U.S. flight of deportees from other nations it agreed to hold in detention facilities for the Trump administration.
The flight of 135 deportees, half of them minors, added Costa Rica to a growing list of Latin American nations to serve as a stopover for migrants as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to step up deportations.
Costa Rica joins Panama in holding deportees from mostly Asian origin until their repatriation can be arranged or they can seek protection somewhere.
The migrants arriving in Costa Rica will be bused to a rural holding facility near the Panama border, where they will be detained up to six weeks and be flown back to their countries of origin, said Omer Badilla, Costa Rica’s deputy minister of the interior and police.
The U.S. government will cover the costs.
The arrangement is part of a deal the Trump administration struck with Costa Rica during U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit earlier this month.
It comes as Trump has pressured countries across the region to help facilitate deportations at times under the threat of steep tariffs or sanctions.
Similar agreements have been reached with other Latin American nations, but the concept of using third countries as deportation layovers has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates.
Concerns revolve around international protections for asylum seekers and whether these deportees will be appropriately screened before being returned to their countries or sent to yet another country.
Badilla said that Thursday’s deportation flight from San Diego is largely made up of families, including 65 children, two pregnant women and an elderly woman.
He said Costa Rica was told by the Trump administration that most of the deportees have agreed to voluntarily return to their countries.
If they refuse, Costa Rica is open to offering deportees refuge or will work with the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, IOM, to facilitate travel to another third country.
In the meantime, migrants will be detained in the border facility, where they will be accompanied by U.N. officials, the Red Cross and other aid-focused government entities.
The facility being used to hold migrants, a former factory, has faced criticisms for its conditions in the past.
AP Video by Berny Araya
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