US will now send Indian deportees to Costa Rica

The Central American country of Costa Rica has agreed to accept illegal Indian migrants deported from the US, creating a ‘bridge’ to working out their eventual fate.

The deportations will start on Wednesday, 19 February, under a US-funded programme and the migrants will be detained in a temporary centre near the border with Panama, the office of President Rodrigo Chaves Robles has announced.

Neither Costa Rica nor the US has said what will happen to these deported migrants subsequently.

The deal helps the US to avoid the costs of setting up massive detention facilities within the country for migrants waiting to be deported — and avoids a significant bit of negative optics.

"The Government of Costa Rica agreed to collaborate with the United States in the repatriation of 200 illegal immigrants to their country," the Costa Rican president's office said, adding that the deportees would include those from India and Central Asia.

India has agreed to take back at least 18,000 illegal migrants in the US and Washington began deporting them directly to India. The third plane carrying 112 illegal migrants landed in Amritsar on Monday, 17 February.

During his visit to Washington the week before that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India would take back any verified Indian illegal migrant in the US and will also crack down on human traffickers exploiting the vulnerable.

The arrangement with Costa Rica followed a visit there by secretary of state Marco Rubio to get the country to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration.

Under similar deals, El Salvador, Panama, and Guatemala are also receiving deported migrants. For instance, illegal migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and China were sent to Panama last week.

The Trump administration also set up a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, where terrorists involved in the 9/11 al-Qaeda attack on the US are housed.

Guantanamo Bay is technically in Cuba, but the area had been leased to the US for a naval base, limiting the application of some aspects of US laws as an external territory.

Costa Rica is on the path there for the illegal migrants coming through from elsewhere in South America, travelling through the notorious Darien Gap jungles in Panama, to head onwards to the US.

Some videos on social media on illegal migration from India show the 'donkey route' for those taking this path.

At his news conference in Washington on Thursday, 13 February, with Trump at his side, PM Modi said that India and the US "have always been of the same opinion, and that any verified Indian who is in the US illegally, we are fully prepared to take them back to India".

He called for cooperation between the US and India to root out traffickers exploiting "the young, vulnerable, poor people of India" who "are fooled into coming over as illegal immigrants".