Costa Rica and Panama are coordinating to expedite southbound migrant transit through their countries along the same route that carried hundreds of thousands north in recent years, officials said Monday.

Costa Rica is positioning itself to take on Taiwan – and not just in the exports of pineapples, writes contributor Alexander C. Kaufman.

“Panama cannot end up becoming a black hole for deported migrants,” said Juan Pappier, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in the Americas. “Migrants have the right to communicate with their families, to seek lawyers and Panama must guarantee transparency about the situation in which they find themselves.”

The flight from San Diego landed in San José, the Costa Rican capital, on Thursday evening. The group of migrants on board included dozens of children, officials said.

The migrants from around the world did not know where they were or what would happen to them, according to an independent government entity.

Their plane was the first such flight to arrive in Costa Rica and carried the latest group of migrants from countries in the Eastern Hemisphere to be deported by the United States to Central America — a new tactic in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

The United States deported 135 migrants of various nationalities, including 65 minors, to Costa Rica on Thursday, according to the Costa Rican government.

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See

Officials in Costa Rica and Panama are confiscating migrants' passports and cellphones, denying them access to legal services and moving them between remote outposts as they wrestle with the logistics of a suddenly reversed migration flow.

“We’re a reflection of current United States immigration policy,” said Harold Villegas-Román, a political science professor and refugee expert at the University of Costa Rica. “There is ...

The United States deported 135 migrants of various nationalities, including 65 minors, to Costa Rica on Thursday, according to the Costa Rican government. Their flight departed from San Diego ...