The first group of migrants deported from the US to third countries has arrived in Costa Rica.
About 25 migrants — including citizens of Albania, Cameroon, China, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Kenya and Morocco — touched down in the island nation’s capital of San Jose on Saturday.
“Upon entering the country, the migrants will receive primary care from the Professional Migration Police, with the cooperation of the International Organization for Migration (IOM),” Costa Rica’s General Directorate of Migration and Foreigners said in a statement.
The group of 25 was the first to arrive in the Central American country since the US and Costa Rica signed an agreement in March.
Under the deal, Costa Rica will receive up to 25 deportees a week, while the US will provide the country with financial support in return.
The IOM will also offer food and accommodation to the migrants for the first seven days of their stay.
Such third-country deportations allow the US to remove migrants from America whose countries of origin refuse to take them back.
The deal has been criticized for costing more than $1 million in taxpayer money per deportee, according to a February report produced by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Costa Rica reserves the right to reject deportees on an individual case.
Officials in the country have also said they won’t send deportees back to places where they may face persecution.
In 2025, Costa Rica accepted up to 200 migrants deported by the United States, eventually granting special migratory status to 85 of them who were unable to be repatriated to their home nations.
Other nations have signed similar agreements with the Trump administration to accept third-country deportees, including Dominica, Guyana, Honduras, Rwanda, St. Kitts and Nevis and South Sudan.
“Costa Rica is prepared to see this flow of people,” said the country’s public security minister, Marioa Zamora Cordero, said in a video statement last month at the time of the signed agreement.
Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also spoke approvingly of the deal signed with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves.
“We are very proud to have partners like President [Chaves] and Costa Rica, who are working to ensure that people who are in our country illegally have the opportunity to return to their countries of origin,” she said in a statement at the time.
Noem has been visiting various Latin American countries, including Ecuador and Guyana, as part of her new role as US Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, after she was fired from the DHS by President Trump.
