A new answer for migrants in Central America: take them north

Miranda Villasmil led her daughter and son past hundreds of packed migrants, many still muddy and swollen from their journey here from South America to Costa Rica. The family of three had with them only two shopping bags containing their belongings from their previous lives in Venezuela.

When they reached the line of shuttle buses that would take them to the Nicaraguan border, Ms. Villasmil was so overwhelmed with relief that she sent home her relatives, who also considered fleeing. The Costa Rican government, she wrote to them, was prepared to provide “safe passage.”

“We are moving forward,” Ms. Villasmil told her family in Venezuela.

Ms. Villasmil is one of thousands of migrants benefiting from new bus programs adopted by Costa Rica and other Central American countries trying to cope with a historic wave of migration crossing their borders.

More than 400,000 people have entered Costa Rica from Panama this year, according to Panamanian officials, doubling the number of crossings from last year and leading to a large tent camp along Costa Rica’s borders, complaints from business owners and an increase in abuse of smuggling operations. .

In October, the Costa Rican government declared a national emergency and formed a plan with Panama to transport migrants from the southern border to the northern border. Costa Rican officials say the bus program has removed the encampment, eased pressure on border communities and given people a safer alternative to paying human smugglers.

Similar bus programs have also emerged in parts of Honduras and Mexico.

But the strategy has raised alarms in the United States, which has called on its Latin American allies to deter people from making the treacherous journey north by encouraging them to seek refugee status closer to their home countries.

Instead, the shuttles appear to form a fast lane so they can race north.

“The United States wants to control the people,” said Dr. Marta Blanco, executive director of the Cadena Foundation, a humanitarian nonprofit currently assisting migrants at a bus station in Costa Rica. “This is to keep sending people, to keep the flow going.”

Biden administration officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record, say they have raised their concerns behind closed doors with the governments of both Costa Rica and Panama, while publicly praising both countries for their cooperation on other security and immigration agreements. Mr Biden even hosted President Rodrigo Chaves of Costa Rica at the White House in August before sending $12 million to the country to strengthen its immigration policies.

But U.S. officials have also argued that the bus routes only push more migrants to flee their homes and make the dangerous journey to the U.S. border. Their Central American counterparts argue that migrants are already planning to travel to the United States and that the bus system makes the journey less dangerous.

“This flow of migration could not be stopped, it cannot be banned, but it can be managed,” said Jose Pablo Vindas, a coordinator with the Costa Rican Migration Police, in an interview from the migrant bus terminal, which was once a pencil factory.

About 30 buses, each carrying 55 migrants, travel in and out of the facility every day. The numbers can spike; More than 14,000 people were bused from Panama to Costa Rica’s northern border in one week, according to Costa Rican officials.

“It is not a matter of allowing, motivating or discouraging these trips,” Mr Vindas said. “It’s about providing safe conditions for the people who do it, because otherwise they would be exposed to human trafficking or dangerous conditions.”

But some families said they encountered these very conditions at the bus station.

The bus program is not free and has added an additional fee to the many costs migrants face on their costly journey north.

It can also be dangerous. Earlier this year, at least 39 people died when a bus carrying migrants through Panama fell off a cliff. Last month, 18 migrants were killed in a bus crash in Mexico and an accident in Honduras left four dead and a dozen injured.

In Panama, each person must pay $60 to be taken by bus to Costa Rica’s main terminal. They then have to pay another $30 to board a shuttle that will take them to the Nicaragua border. The costs are collected by the bus companies, which are licensed by the government.

On a recent October day at the terminal, dozens of frenzied families lined up outside a money transfer office to receive money from relatives for a bus ticket.

Travelers can only leave the facility by bus, Mr Vindas said. They cannot simply leave the complex.

In a nearby building, bunk beds and military camp beds were set up for about 380 people, but they had been full for days. Mr Vindas said the facility normally housed more than 1,000 people and had recently housed up to 1,800 people, with hundreds sleeping on the floor.

Jose Diaz and his family had already been on the road for 20 days when they arrived at the bus station. They were relieved to simply board one of the government-provided shuttles in Panama that would transport them north.

But he soon discovered he needed more bus tickets – and he’d spent his last $120 in Panama just to get here.

The Diaz family had two options, a terminal worker said: a family member could transfer money, or they could wait in the dark bus station underpass with dozens of other families and sleep on concrete in minimal light. As the terminal filled with people, Mr. Diaz prepared his daughters to walk under the building.

“We feel like prisoners – prisoners, prisoners, prisoners – because we can’t come out,” he said. ‘They think you have a lot of money. Instead, people come to secure their future.”

Below, in the dark, families huddled on slabs on the concrete floor or leaned on loose plastic construction barricades. There was one frame for a bunk bed, but no mattress. Toddlers in diapers ran around dazed adults. Parents desperately tried to find staff to help their sick children.

Some migrants said they were not given regular meals and that when they asked for water, they had to drink rainwater dripping from the floor above. Many said the only way they could get enough money was to leave the institution and go to work – something the authorities had banned.

In an interview, Marta Vindas, the migration director for Costa Rica, rejected comparisons of the bus station to a detention center, noting that the migrants had access to bathrooms, meals and numerous humanitarian organizations on site.

“This is a transit zone; that is the reason they are there, so they can flow to the other border,” Ms Vindas said.

Other Central American countries have also adopted busing practices. Honduran migration and transportation officials created direct bus routes to Guatemala as a safe alternative for migrants. In Mexico, transit programs are more sporadic. The government has set up centers in Oaxaca where buses transport migrants north to ease pressure on the country’s southern border, but has also flown migrants south, away from the US border.

In the United States, Texas and Florida have bused migrants to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and several other cities to reduce the concentration of people arriving in border towns. But Republicans have also exploited this practice to punish blue states.

Before Costa Rica’s bus program, migrants crossed that country’s southern border without much difficulty before temporarily settling in a tent camp at a fairground in the city of Paso Canoas in search of short-term jobs.

“At least this bus system addresses the problem somewhere else, instead of keeping it here,” said Rubén Acón, president of Canatur, Costa Rica’s national tourism chamber. He said the country is facing “the same situation” as New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams has said his resources have been depleted by the wave of migrants arriving in the city.

From the street outside the bus station, Kimberly Salas, 43, of Venezuela, and her son, Pedro Zerpa, wondered whether they should go inside. While traveling from Panama, they had heard about the new bus program that could speed up their journey north. But as they were thinking about it, they saw a person in the window of the building motioning for them to stay away.

“It’s OK,” Mr. Zerpa said. “We can walk.”

The next day they were spotted walking under the blazing sun along a highway heading north into the United States.

Emiliano Rodriguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City, and Joan Suazo from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.