What Trump’s Deportation Plans Mean for Central America
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News Analysis
Deporting migrants to Central American countries removes many political and legal hurdles for the Trump administration. How far can the practice go before these nations reach a breaking point?
Central American countries have long taken back their own citizens deported from the United States. But now the Trump administration has called on them to take in people from other countries around the world as well.
The extraordinary measures involved in these deportations — hundreds of migrants whisked away by plane without knowing their destinations and bused to isolated shelters — have shifted attention to Panama and Costa Rica and to how Trump’s immigration crackdown is playing out far beyond U.S. borders.
So far, the number of migrants from elsewhere deported to Central America is still small, and it remains unclear if it will grow. Regional leaders largely say they are actively cooperating with the United States or have downplayed the significance of the deportations. However, analysts warn that these leaders have been backed into a corner with the threat of tariffs and that any increase in deportation flights could eventually push Central America to its limits.
“They’re powerless to do anything,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, a research institute in London. “And we saw with President Petro of Colombia the consequences if you resist: sanctions against diplomatic personnel, loss of visa rights, as well as tariffs.”
This month, the Trump administration sent three military planes carrying roughly 300 migrants — mostly from Asia and the Middle East — to Panama. Days later, a flight carrying 135 people, nearly half of them children and including dozens of people from China, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, landed in Costa Rica.
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