QCOSTARICA — Costa Rica will receive 200 migrants deported by the United States, of which 50 are children who will remain in Costa Rica for a maximum of six weeks before being repatriated to their places of origin, according to President Rodrigo Chaves.
The expenses of their stay will be covered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with funding from the U.S. government.
The first group of 93 migrants, mostly from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and India, will arrive today, Thursday, at the Juan Santamaría International (San Jose) Airport on a commercial flight paid for by the United States.
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Initially, their arrival was scheduled for Wednesday, but the Presidency announced a change in the flight schedule.
The migrants will be transferred to the southern part of the country, and remain in the Temporary Attention Center for Migrants (Catem), near the border with Panama, for a period of three to six weeks, without the possibility of leaving the facilities.
On their arrival they will be registered and subjected to biometric controls before the repatriation procedures begin.
“What we had before was a mess. Now the United States is coming and they are treating us very well, because we are close collaborators. They asked us to receive 200 migrants from places like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and India, because they cannot process so many people,” said Chaves.
The president assured that it is an orderly process and that the migrants will be guarded by the Fuerza Publica, Costa Rica’s national police.
“Fifty children are coming and we are going to treat them well here. We are helping the economic brother of the north. There is no need to be afraid of that,” Chaves added.
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For his part, the Minister of Security, Mario Zamora, emphasized that none of the migrants represents a risk to the country’s security.
“None of them have pending crimes or are terrorists,” he said.
Foreign Minister Arnoldo André Tinoco stressed that Costa Rica will not assume the costs of caring for these people, and that the length of their stay in the country will depend on the repatriation procedures with the receiving countries.
The measure is part of an effort at humanitarian cooperation within the framework of the bilateral relationship with the United States.
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