Costa Rica’s Ombudsman’s Office has given immigration authorities 24 hours to disclose where the first group of migrants deported from the United States is being housed, adding fresh pressure to a new bilateral arrangement that is already drawing scrutiny just days after it began. The group of 25 arrived on Saturday under a March agreement that allows Costa Rica to receive up to 25 third-country deportees per week from the United States.
The Ombudsman said it still had not received official confirmation of the migrants’ location more than 48 hours after their arrival, blocking its ability to carry out an on-site inspection. It is also seeking details on how long the deportees are expected to remain where they are, and what plan exists for anyone who cannot be returned quickly to a country of origin or another destination. That request shows a bigger concern that Costa Rica could once again find itself managing a legally and politically messy process with limited transparency.
The new program puts Costa Rica inside the Trump administration’s wider third-country deportation strategy, under which migrants can be removed to countries other than their own while their cases or onward returns are handled. The first group included people from Albania, Cameroon, China, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Kenya and Morocco. Under the arrangement, the United States is expected to provide financial backing, while the International Organization for Migration is covering food, lodging and basic humanitarian support during the first seven days.
Costa Rican authorities have pushed back on the criticism, saying the migrants are not being held in detention. Immigration chief Omer Badilla said they are in “full freedom,” staying in a hotel, and that officials withheld the exact location out of privacy concerns. The group is said to being housed in a hotel in the capital area for seven days and can move freely inside the country while deciding among options that include assisted voluntary return, a refuge claim, or another humanitarian migration path.
That marks a clear break from Costa Rica’s troubled handling of a similar U.S. deportation transfer in 2025. In that case, 200 deported migrants were taken to the CATEM facility near the Panama border. Costa Rica’s Constitutional Chamber later ruled that authorities violated fundamental rights by failing to provide timely information on migration status, access to legal advice, contact with the outside, and early notice of the option to seek refuge. The court ordered that each person’s status be individually defined and that they be released.
For Costa Rica, the dispute is an early test of how this new deportation program will work in practice. Even with U.S. funding and IOM support, the weekly flow could quickly become a recurring strain if returns slow, if more migrants seek legal stay, or if oversight agencies are left chasing basic information after each arrival. The Ombudsman’s intervention suggests the central issue is no longer only migration policy, but also how openly and coherently the government can run it.
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