Two hundred people, including seventy-nine children, were flown here in February 2025 and held for sixty-two days. Costa Rica's own Constitutional Chamber found the detention unlawful, arbitrary and without any legal basis, ordered their release and damages, and had to repeat the order in October under threat of discipline.
What the record showsA receiving stateAs of September 10, 2026
Arrangement reported
Yes
Transfers reported
Yes
People with protection among them
Not established
Onward return reported
Yes
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
AlertArbitrary detention on arrivalCosta Rica
Basis: a judgment of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, the reports of Costa Rica’s own national mechanism for the prevention of torture, and the government’s own published orders. Costa Rica is the one state on this list whose courts have already ruled on what was done to the people sent to it, and the ruling went against the government. The designation records that finding. It also records that the finding had to be repeated in October 2025 because the government had not complied.
Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, 24 June 2025
From their arrival on 20 February 2025 the people protected by the petition “fueron privadas de su libertad de forma ilegítima”, unlawfully deprived of their liberty, including at the outset 79 children, without having committed any offence and without even an irregular entry, since the Costa Rican government had itself consented to their admission. “La privación de libertad es arbitraria y excesiva.”
The same judgment, on whether there was a law for it
The explanation that people were confined because they were in transit and for their own safety “no se ajustan a los parámetros de razonabilidad y proporcionalidad propios de un Estado democrático de Derecho”, and, this being a novel situation, “se carecía de una regulación legal que respaldara la privación de libertad”. There was no legal basis for it at all.
Costa Rica’s national mechanism for the prevention of torture, 4 March 2025
It called the confinement a de facto deprivation of liberty within two weeks of the first flight, and said the label used makes no difference: “Es una privación de libertad a pesar de que se usen nombres como ‘retención temporal’, ‘atención transitoria’, ‘alojamiento humanitario’.” Its first recommendation was to end the restriction on leaving and return everyone’s identity documents.
The Chamber again, 31 October 2025
Four months after the judgment the Chamber had to order the Director General of Migration to comply with it, “bajo la advertencia de ordenarse la apertura de un procedimiento administrativo en su contra si no lo hiciere”, under warning that disciplinary proceedings would be opened against him if he did not.
What an Alert meansDesignated September 10, 2026Review: on whether access for civil society organisations to the hotels housing the 2026 arrivals, revoked on 12 August 2026, is restored
The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.
What has happened
There have been two cohorts, and they are not alike. Two hundred people arrived in February 2025 and were confined for sixty-two days. A second and much larger movement began in April 2026 under a written memorandum providing for regular weekly flights, and by the middle of August 2026 the Costa Rican government’s own registry recorded at least 331 people arrived on seventeen flights.
Arrangement. Documented, and the 2025 one was not written. Costa Rica’s own published order records that the United States special envoy for Latin America said in a diplomatic note of 17 February 2025 that his country would deport up to 200 people of various nationalities to Costa Rica from 19 February. A written instrument followed on 3 April 2025, and a further memorandum in 2026 sets the pattern of weekly transfers.
Transferred. 200 people on 20 and 25 February 2025, of whom 79 were children on the Chamber’s figure and 81 on Human Rights Watch’s. From twenty countries including China, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Russia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Georgia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, Congo, Nepal, Yemen, Angola, India, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Then at least 331 more from April to August 2026.
People with protection among them. Investigating. What is documented is that asylum was not mentioned to the 2025 group at all until 26 March 2025, five weeks after they landed.
Onward return. Documented. Of the 200, the Ombudsman’s figures cited in March 2026 were 110 who left under assisted voluntary return, 34 who left after filing asylum applications and 57 who left voluntarily. Those add to 201, one more than the total, and the Coalition prints them as it found them rather than tidying the arithmetic.
What was done to the first two hundred
They were taken to the migrant care centre in the south of the country, near the Panamanian border, under a written order of 28 February 2025 directing the migration police to move them there and to keep them in the centre “until their departure from the national territory”. Their passports were formally seized under a temporary confiscation measure, receipted, and locked in a safe at the police coordination office at Paso Canoas.
Interpreters were provided in Russian, English, Arabic and Mandarin, which as the Chamber observed did not correspond to the nationalities of the people being held. Of those interviewed by three organisations that visited, seven could speak English and none spoke Spanish. The space for legal assistance was so small that conversations had to be continued informally through the fence.
The children did not go to school. The Ombudsman asked the child protection agency on 4 March 2025 what would be done to guarantee their right to education and what had been coordinated with the Ministry of Education, and recorded that no answer had been received. Three organisations that visited found a space set aside for children with no feature adapted to education or recreation, and that the child protection agency was not providing psychological care there.
People were told they could come and go in daylight, and their passports began to be returned, from 23 April 2025. That is sixty-two days after the first flight.
The ruling, and the fact that it had to be repeated
On 7 March 2025 a Costa Rican journalist, Mauricio Alberto Herrera Ulloa, filed a habeas corpus petition in his own name for the benefit of the people who had been flown in. Three organisations joined as co-petitioners: the Center for Justice and International Law, the Jesuit Migrant Service of Costa Rica, and the American Friends Service Committee.
On 24 June 2025 the Constitutional Chamber upheld the petition in part, by a majority. It found the deprivation of liberty unlawful from the day of arrival, arbitrary and excessive, without any legal basis, and reached without any individual decision about anybody. It ordered the Director General of Migration, within fifteen days, to define each person’s immigration status by an individual reasoned decision and to release them, and to have their needs in health, education and housing assessed. It ordered the state to pay damages, to be quantified separately.
It refused the petition on access to public information. And it held, in terms, that the decision to admit people on humanitarian grounds is a political act outside constitutional review, and that the reasons of the United States government for its own immigration policy were not before it.
Three of the seven magistrates dissented and would have dismissed the petition entirely.
On 31 October 2025 the Chamber had to return to the case and order the Director General to comply with its judgment, under warning that disciplinary proceedings would be opened against him if he did not.
Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, resolution 2025-019485, expediente 25-006713-0007-CO, 24 June 2025, and resolution 2025-035600 in the same file, 31 October 2025. Three further habeas petitions about the same events were refused or referred back to this judgment.
The second cohort, and what changed
Flights resumed on 11 April 2026 under a memorandum whose annex provides for transfers at a rate of twenty-five people a week. Seventeen flights had arrived by 13 August 2026. On the Costa Rican registry as read by the monitoring project Third Country Deportation Watch, at least 331 people had been transferred by 6 August, of whom 137 had left the country, 29 were in the process of assisted voluntary return and 165 remained.
The conditions were materially better. Costa Rica’s own prevention mechanism inspected the arrivals in April 2026, and what it found was free movement, documents retained by their owners, interpretation, and a humanitarian status of one year carrying the right to work. The Coalition records that as plainly as it records the year before.
Two things have gone the other way since. The monitoring project reports that people holding humanitarian status are not automatically given a document that lets them work, and that monitoring in the week of 9 July 2026 found new arrivals from several African countries being given only a tourist visa rather than the humanitarian status. And on 12 August 2026, two days after organisations were allowed into one of the hotels on an official visit at which they could not speak to anyone confidentially, the authorities told them that access for civil society was being revoked, on the ground that they should not have asked people what had happened to them before they arrived in Costa Rica or suggested that they could obtain legal status, services and documents.
The figures for 2026 come from a named organisation’s reading of a Costa Rican government registry that the Coalition could not open for itself, and are published with that qualification.
What routes exist
More than anywhere else in this batch, and they have been used.
The Committee against Torture is open to individuals. Costa Rica signed the Convention on 4 February 1985, ratified it on 11 November 1993 with no reservations, and on 27 February 2002 made the declarations under both article 21 and article 22, unconditionally. A person in Costa Rica can complain to the Committee.
There is a working national mechanism for the prevention of torture. Costa Rica ratified the Optional Protocol on 1 December 2005. The mechanism sits within the Ombudsman’s office and was created by law in 2014. It inspected the centre three times in February 2025, monitored both flights at the airport, published its assessment within two weeks, filed its report into the court proceedings, and inspected the 2026 arrivals. Its reports are published.
The domestic court worked, slowly. The habeas petition was filed sixteen days after the first flight and decided a hundred and nine days later. It is the only judgment in favour of anyone transferred under this programme anywhere in this project.
A caution about the Inter-American Court. Its seat is in San José. That is a fact about a building and it confers nothing on a person in Costa Rica. The Court takes no petitions directly. A case reaches it only after the Inter-American Commission, which is in Washington, has processed a petition and referred it. The Coalition states this because it is the single most misleading true sentence available about Costa Rica.
The first days
Drawn from what worked in 2025 rather than from what should have happened. Nothing below is advice, and no page can tell a particular person what to do in their case.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
Ask for asylum out loud, on the day, whether or not anyone offers it
The Chamber found that the possibility of claiming asylum was not communicated to the 2025 group when they arrived, was not in the order authorising their entry, and that the failure injured the rights of anyone who would have used it. People were told for the first time on 26 March, five weeks in. Nobody has to wait to be offered.
Get a receipt for the passport, and keep it
Documents were taken and formally seized under a written measure, with an act issued for each passport. That paperwork is what later proved the confinement. Whatever is handed over, ask for the paper that records it.
Call the Ombudsman on the free line, and say the words deprivation of liberty
The Defensoría de los Habitantes is the national human rights institution and houses the mechanism for the prevention of torture. There is a free complaints line and a WhatsApp number. The mechanism has a statutory right of entry and was inside the centre within days.
Reach the Jesuit Migrant Service, which is the refugee agency's legal partner
It is the organisation recorded as having given legal advice to people in the 2025 group, and the United Nations refugee agency names it as the partner providing free legal advice and representation for asylum, statelessness and change of status. Its services are free.
Remember that the case that worked was brought by someone on the outside
The habeas petition was filed by a journalist acting in his own name for the benefit of people he did not know, with three organisations joining him. A relative, a friend or a stranger can start the process that a person held inside cannot.
Who is reachable in Costa Rica
Every entry below was checked on 10 September 2026 against the source named in it. These are, unusually for this project, the organisations that actually litigated the case and won it.
Official bodies that take complaints
The national human rights institution, which also houses the national mechanism for the prevention of torture. The mechanism publishes no separate telephone or email, so a complaint to it goes through this office
The United Nations refugee agency's partner for free legal advice, information and representation in asylum, statelessness and change of status matters. It joined the habeas petition, and is the only organisation recorded as having given legal advice to the people held in 2025. All services are free
Routes individual matters to its partner organisations rather than handling them directly. It publishes no street address or direct email for its San José office. It has a permanent office in Upala
ACNUR Costa Rica, the United Nations refugee agency
The American Friends Service Committee was the third co-petitioner in the habeas proceeding and publishes no direct route for individual cases in Costa Rica; its enquiries go to its headquarters in Philadelphia. The Coalition says so rather than sending a family to an address that does not answer.
What is not established
How many children were on the flights. The Chamber and the migration authority say 79. Human Rights Watch says 81. Unresolved.
What became of the 200, exactly. The figures reported at different dates by the migration authority, the Ombudsman, the government and visiting organisations conflict with one another, and one published breakdown adds to 201. The Coalition prints them with their dates and attributions and reconciles none of them.
That anyone was resettled to a third country. Costa Rica approached Spain and Canada. As at 7 May 2025 it told Human Rights Watch that no one had benefited from that option. No later figure exists.
That any United Nations body has written to Costa Rica about any of this. None has. There is no special procedures communication. The Committee against Torture’s most recent concluding observations predate the flights.
The 2026 figures. They come from a named organisation’s reading of a government registry the Coalition could not open.
The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.
What runs the other way
This section is longer here than on any other page in this project, and the Coalition regards that as the honest result rather than an awkward one.
Costa Rica’s own institutions found against Costa Rica. The mechanism for the prevention of torture said within two weeks that this was a deprivation of liberty whatever it was called, and told the government to end it. The Ombudsman opened an active observation and put questions the government did not answer. The Constitutional Chamber found the detention arbitrary, ordered release and damages, and enforced its own order in October under threat of discipline. No other state in this project has produced a judgment for the people sent to it.
Three magistrates of seven dissented and would have dismissed the petition entirely. The Chamber refused the complaint about access to information, and held expressly that the decision to admit people on humanitarian grounds is a political act it will not review.
The second cohort was treated differently. On the prevention mechanism’s own record the 2026 arrivals had freedom of movement, kept their documents, had interpretation, and were given a humanitarian status valid for a year with the right to work.
Costa Rica has accepted every complaint mechanism available to it: articles 21 and 22 of the Convention against Torture, unconditionally, since 2002; the Optional Protocol since 2005, with a functioning national mechanism that publishes its reports; the individual communications procedure on children’s rights since 2014; and the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court since 1980.
What this page does not yet carry
Whether the order of 24 June 2025 has now been complied with, and whether any damages have been paid. The Chamber was still enforcing it in October 2025 and the Coalition has found nothing since.
What has happened to access for civil society organisations since it was revoked on 12 August 2026.
The government registry of 2026 arrivals, in the original. Every attempt to open it was refused.
Whether people given only a tourist visa in July 2026 have since been given the humanitarian status.
If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Sources
Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.
Costa Rican courts. Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, resolution 2025-019485, expediente 25-006713-0007-CO, 24 June 2025; resolution 2025-035600 in the same file, 31 October 2025; and resolutions 2025-022235, 2025-022749 and 2025-027425 in the related petitions. All read in the Judicial Power’s own jurisprudence database. The Chamber’s own press statement of 24 June 2025.
The Costa Rican government’s own orders. Resolución D.JUR-0057-02-2025-JM, published in Alcance 22 to La Gaceta No. 32, 18 February 2025, authorising the entry. Resolución D.JUR-0073-02-2025-JM, published in Alcance 28 to La Gaceta No. 40, 28 February 2025, ordering the confinement.
Costa Rica’s national mechanism for the prevention of torture. Its preliminary considerations of 4 March 2025, and its special monitoring report MNPT-INF-225-2025 on the visits of 19 and 21 February 2025 and the airport monitoring of the flights of 20 and 25 February.
Reports. Human Rights Watch on the expulsion of 200 people to Costa Rica, 22 May 2025, with the government’s reply of 15 May 2025 at its appendix 3. Findings report of the Center for Justice and International Law, the Jesuit Migrant Service and the American Friends Service Committee on their visit of 10 April 2025. Third Country Deportation Watch, Costa Rica page, last updated 15 August 2026.
Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, for the ratification of 11 November 1993 and the declarations under articles 21 and 22 of 27 February 2002, and chapter IV-9-b for the Optional Protocol. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Herrera Ulloa v. Costa Rica, Series C No. 107, 2 July 2004, paragraph 5, for the acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction on 2 July 1980.
Compiled 10 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Every quotation was taken from the document itself. One date in the Coalition’s working notes was corrected before publication: the enforcement resolution of 31 October 2025 misstates the date of the judgment it enforces, and this page uses the date given in the judgment itself and in the Chamber’s press statement. Corrections to the Coalition.
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