A group of lawyers on Thursday filed a suit against Costa Rica, claiming that it has violated the rights of dozens of minors deported from the United States by detaining them for nearly two months and by holding them in conditions “that could cause irreparable harm.”
This is the second high-profile legal challenge against a Central American nation that has agreed to take in hundreds of deportees expelled by U.S. authorities — the result of the Trump administration’s effort to get other countries to help it carry out mass deportations.
The latest lawsuit was filed by a group of migrant rights lawyers before the U.N. committee that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Ian Kysel, a professor at Cornell Law School and a founding member of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, one of the organizations filing the lawsuit, said that because Costa Rica has agreed to additional measures under the U.N. treaty, complaints against it can be brought to the panel of experts.
That panel can issue a directive, he said, but “ultimately, it’s going to be up to Costa Rica to follow it, and for other states who have signed on to this, to kind of shame them if they don’t.”
In late February, 200 migrants from nations outside the Western Hemisphere, such as China, Iran, Vietnam and Uzbekistan, arrived in Costa Rica on two deportation flights from the United States. The group, which included 81 children, was then bused to a remote facility several hours from the capital, near the border with Panama, to wait there until migrants either asked to be sent back to their home countries or were granted asylum by some other nation.
Omer Badilla, the head of Costa Rica’s migration authority, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit or the conditions the deportees lived in. Government officials have disputed reports made by human rights groups — and by Costa Rica’s ombudsman — that the deportees have been mistreated.
President Rodrigo Chaves of Costa Rica has said his country would only act as “a bridge,” a temporary transit point for foreigners deported from the United States.
“We are helping the economically powerful brother to the north, who if they impose a tax in our free trade zone, it’ll screw us,” he said in February. “And besides, love is repaid with love.”
It is unclear how many people remain in the detention facility, a former pencil factory now called the Temporary Attention Center for Migrants, where they were supposed to stay for up to 30 days.
Since the U.N. panel may take many months to issue a ruling on Costa Rica, the lawyers have asked for an interim emergency order.
The suit described the stories of four representative children, between the ages 2 and 10, whose families said they had fled persecution in countries such as Azerbaijan or Iran, and claimed they have lacked access to schooling, pediatricians or legal counsel while in Costa Rica.
On a recent sweltering day at the center, Saber, a 31-year-old Afghan man, worried about what he, his wife and their toddler would do if returned to their homeland. “We can’t go back to Afghanistan, we are not safe there,” he said in an interview, asking, like other migrants at the facility, that only his first name be used out of fear he could be repatriated.
The coalition of international lawyers who filed the suit estimates that nearly 100 people are still detained, including about 50 children. The rest have been repatriated, according to a letter Costa Rica’s government signed in March.
“They’ve made these people leave Costa Rica through what they call ‘voluntary returns,’” said Silvia Serna Román, the lead litigator in the case. “But if you put them in a situation where they are forced to make a decision, then you strip away the voluntary nature of these returns.”
Until recently, Costa Rican authorities insisted that no migrant had expressed fear of returning to their home country. In an interview in March, however, Mr. Badilla, the head of Costa Rica’s migration authority, acknowledged that some migrants were fearful.
“If a person fears for his or her life in his or her country of origin, Costa Rica will not send that person back,” Mr. Badilla said. This month, the government said 16 Chinese nationals had requested asylum in Costa Rica.
Many of the lawyers who sued Costa Rica did the same with Panama in March.
That case was filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and claimed that the detention of the migrants violated domestic and international laws. A week later, Panama released over 100 migrants who had been deported there from the United States the previous month and were being held in a remote jungle camp.
Mr. Kysel, the Cornell law school professor, said the goal was to scrutinize countries that have aided the Trump administration’s immigration policies, particularly its efforts to take away the right to seek asylum, and to urge Latin American governments to push back.
David Bolaños contributed reporting from San José and Corredores, Costa Rica, and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
James Wagner covers Latin America, including sports, and is based in Mexico City. A Nicaraguan American from the Washington area, he is a native Spanish speaker.
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