By Haydeé López
In December 2024, just weeks before Donald Trump returned to the presidency of the United States, Guillermo, a fictitious name to protect his identity, made a decision marked by desperation and a lack of opportunities.
A Venezuelan living in Bogotá, he had spent years trying to rebuild his life after being forced to leave his country, but the persistent economic crisis and job insecurity in Colombia had been closing off his options.
With few alternatives and many urgent needs, she embarked on the journey to the United States with her two youngest daughters, aged 16 and 13, and her grandson of just 11 months, choosing one of the most dangerous routes on the continent: the crossing through the Darien Gap.
"We knew we were crossing a dangerous area. We'd heard there were wild animals, swollen rivers, and that rain and mud could make every step risky. But we were told that traveling in a group would be safer."He recounted."
Human violence and vulnerability
What Guillermo never imagined was that the greatest danger did not come from the unforgiving environment of the jungle but from the people who operate in the shadows of that migratory route.
It was not nature that would end up marking their history, but human violence that takes advantage of the vulnerability of those who cross the Darien.
I met Guillermo and his family at the community dining hall run by the Franciscan Network for Migrants with support from the Quixote Center in Paso Canoas, Costa Rica, in March 2025.
His only wish was to return to Colombia, not to continue on to the United States. But without money, without documents (some lost during the Darien crossing), and with the weight of trauma on his shoulders, the chances were slim.
Guillermo explained that they received lunch at the community dining hall, their only substantial meal of the day. They tried to make ends meet by selling candy on the streets of Paso Canoas.
A kind woman, seeing them sleeping on the street, lent them a room temporarily.
Even so, the little they earned was barely enough for the baby's food and some flour to make arepas. Returning to Colombia became, with each passing day, a more distant possibility.
“I didn’t know there was a new president in the United States. I didn’t know he was going to close the border. I found out here, from other migrants who were returning, that continuing was no longer an option. If I had known this, I wouldn’t have left Colombia,” she said between sobs.
Deported to third countries
While in Paso Canoas he embraced those going through the painful process of reverse migration, people like Guillermo, who were now trying to return to South America after having failed in their attempt to reach the United States, just 20 minutes from the dining room where they met another parallel reality unfolded.
Nearly 200 people, deported from the United States, were being held at the Temporary Migrant Care Center (CATEM) in Puntarenas. They came from countries in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, and more than 70 were minors.
By then, Costa Rica, Panama, and El Salvador were already receiving deported migrants from the United States who were not their citizens, as part of bilateral agreements and migration arrangements, although the authorities did not always publicly disclose their terms.
Although the concept of "removals to third countries" existed before, what changed was its scale and the speed with which it began to be applied.
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“A network of transfers”
What was historically used in exceptional situations became consolidated as a systematic strategy of migration deterrence and externalization of borders.
In less than a year, these agreements ceased to be one-off arrangements and transformed into a broader diplomatic architecture.
A report prepared by Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee revealed that, in 2025 alone, the Trump administration allocated more than $40 million to relocate hundreds of migrants to at least two dozen countries with which they had no ties of citizenship, residency, or family networks.
The report argues that the policy not only expanded the practice of outsourcing deportations, but also institutionalized financial mechanisms and bilateral agreements with little public oversight, prioritizing operational speed over procedural safeguards and due process.
In practice, this meant that the authorities sent asylum seekers and people with open migration processes to countries with which they had no connection, without offering them clear information about their legal status or their real chances of protection.
From the beginning of these agreements, Enlace Latino NC has been monitoring cases in Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and other receiving countries.
What began as a measure presented as "temporary" ended up configuring a network of transfers that redefined migratory borders in the region.
The following is a brief overview of what was documented on the ground.
Costa Rica: detention without legal clarity
At CATEM, where nearly 200 deported people were taken, including more than 70 minors, was Alexander, a 37-year-old Russian citizen.
He, his wife, and his son were arrested during a date related to his asylum application U.S..
“They told us they were going to temporarily hold our passports,” he recounted. “Then they detained us for weeks. And suddenly, one day they put us on a plane. That’s when we found out they were sending us to Costa Rica.”
Human Rights Watch documented that several migrants were handcuffed and chained during the transfers.
Some reported family separations. In one case, authorities sent an Iranian man to Costa Rica without his wife; in another, they deported a 10-year-old girl with her father while her stepmother remained detained in the United States.
Without freedom to leave
Although the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Security insisted that it was not a formal arrest, for months these people were not free to leave.
They also lacked adequate legal assistance and information in their own languages.
The center, designed for short stays, ended up functioning as a space for prolonged confinement without a clear legal basis, according to organizations that monitored the case.
In February 2026, the British newspaper The Guardian It was reported that the German company Faber-Castell questioned the Costa Rican government for having given a different use than agreed to an old factory donated in 2018 for humanitarian purposes, by designating it as a lodging center for people deported from the United States.
For its part, Costa Rican media They noted that, so far in 2026, around 60 migrants had passed through the center and that, at the end of January, there were no people staying at the site.
El Salvador: imprisonment without trial
Further north, in El Salvador, the government deported 252 Venezuelan migrants and transferred them to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison of maximum security intended for gang members.
The authorities accused them of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang, but did not present individual evidence or offer them fair trials before imprisoning them.
Numerous human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch y Cristosal, They have documented systematic abuses: beatings, physical and psychological torture, punishments in isolation and sexual violence within CECOT.
Some testimonies describe how prison authorities forced migrants to kneel, beat them with sticks, and punished them for extended periods for protesting inside the prison.
CECOT, the impact of the past months
For months they remained imprisoned without trial or adequate access to lawyers, initially without the possibility of communicating with family members or defending their cases.
International organizations consider these practices to constitute serious human rights violations.
Furthermore, they argue that the Trump administration acted with indirect complicity by funding or facilitating the detention of migrants in a third country with a history of abuses.
Until July 2025, the authorities kept that group detained without offering them a clear legal process.
Finally, the Salvadoran authorities transferred them to Venezuela as part of a diplomatic exchange in which Caracas released several US citizens who were being held in that country.
Although this repatriation got them out of prison, the impact of the months spent in CECOT, the treatment they received, and the lack of transparent legal procedures continue to generate controversy, international criticism, and legal action.
Court order
In February 2026, a federal judge ordered the US administration to facilitate, at its own expense, the return of some of these migrants, concluding that it violated their procedural rights by deporting them without allowing them to appear or defend themselves.
During 2025, the authorities also sent another group of non-Salvadoran migrants to El Salvador under similar mechanisms of removal to third countries, including people with pending asylum applications or without criminal records, who were transferred to CECOT without due process.
Panama: custody, transfer and abandonment
In February 2025, nearly 300 migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East were deported from the United States to Panama under third-country transfer schemes.
Upon their arrival, the authorities housed them in a hotel in the capital under guard and prevented them from leaving.
Those who could not safely return to their countries and chose to remain in Panama were transferred to a camp in Darien.
Months later, and after public pressure, the authorities left them at bus stations without clear information about their status or real protection options.
In a gymnasium of the Fe y Alegría organization, in Panama City, we were able to talk with several of the affected families.
At that time there were 57 people from 12 countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.
An Ethiopian woman recounted that they had temporary permits in the United States when she was detained.
After their arrest, and without prior notice, they were transferred to a detention center and later sent to Panama, a country they did not know and whose language they did not speak.
“I’m afraid they’ll deport me back to my country,” an Iranian woman, who preferred not to give her name, told us. “I escaped a forced marriage. If they send me back, I’m going to die,” she emphasized, her voice breaking.
Other people said they had reached the border after an exhausting continental journey and that, upon surrendering to immigration authorities, they were informed that they would be transferred to Texas.
However, they ended up in Panama. “For many days my family in Cameroon didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I was either until they told us upon landing that we were in Panama,” recounted a young woman, still confused and who declined to share her name.
History of Marimar, a small port
In Marimar, a small port on the Panamanian Caribbean coast, we also found about 100 people, including children, who had been deported at the border with Mexico or expelled after trying to request protection.
There, their stories intersected with those of other migrants who, faced with the impossibility of moving forward, were undertaking the return journey to South America.
Entire families, like Guillermo's, were trying to raise the money needed to retrace their steps and return home.
Many waited for weeks, saving dollar by dollar until they had enough to pay for the boats that would take them back to Colombian lands.
Each morning only three boats departed, with a total of 36 people on board, making the wait long and uncertain.
The journey no longer symbolized a dream of the future, but the painful price of retracing the path traveled.
Marilis, a 23-year-old Venezuelan mother, sat in the plaza with her nearly two-year-old son in her arms. She had been detained and deported on her way to work in Chicago.
With a tired but firm gaze, she summed up her desire in a single sentence: "We just want to go back to a place where we're not treated like criminals."
From Marimar they would depart for coastal communities and, from there, board small boats towards Capurganá and then towards Necoclí, already in Colombian territory.
Terrifying experience
Guillermo, whom we helped to get the $250 that each ticket cost to cross with his daughters and grandson, told us weeks later that the journey was terrifying.
“When we were out at sea, there were moments when we thought the boat was going to capsize. We were very scared of the movement and how it would affect the baby.”
Until the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, no official and verifiable data on new rounds of mass deportations to Panama under this scheme have been publicly reported, beyond the first phase documented in 2025.
However, the episode left a deep mark: people transferred without links to the receiving country, held in custody, internally displaced and finally abandoned to their fate in a geography that was not their own.
The expansion of agreements with third countries
El report prepared by the Democratic members of United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee It examines in detail the agreements signed with five countries: El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Eswatini and Palau.
According to the document, the administration allegedly committed to making direct payments to these governments to facilitate the reception of deported migrants who are not citizens of those territories, thus consolidating the use of so-called "removals to third countries".
The breakdown indicates that approximately 250 Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador; 29 migrants to Equatorial Guinea; 15 to Eswatini; and seven to Rwanda.
No one was ultimately transferred to Palau, even though the country was included in the agreements analyzed.
“Above due process”
Beyond the numbers, the report raises a fundamental concern about the structural shift this policy has taken.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire and a senior member of the committee, was forceful in her criticism.
“Deporting migrants to countries with which they have no connection has become a routine instrument of diplomacy.”
He also warned that “millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent without meaningful oversight or accountability,” prioritizing speed and deterrence over due process and respect for human rights.
Transparency in agreements
The document argues that the administration has expanded and institutionalized a system by which the United States urges or pressures other countries to accept migrants who are not its citizens.
They are often carried out through costly, opaque, and poorly monitored agreements.
What was previously applied in exceptional circumstances has now become a regular tool within the migration control strategy.
The magnitude of this expansion is reflected in internal government documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
According to those records, there are currently 47 removal agreements with third countries in various stages of negotiation.
Of that total, 15 have already been completed, while another 10 are finished or close to completion.
Meanwhile, the government is negotiating additional agreements with countries that would accept asylum seekers while their cases are being processed: there are 17 processes underway, including nine that have already formally come into effect.
However, the documents indicate that the administration believes that an agreement does not need to be fully formalized in order for transfers to that country to take place.
Diplomatic pressure, migration cooperation
This network of agreements does not occur in a vacuum. In February 2025, the president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, publicly acknowledged the tensions surrounding these types of decisions.
“We are helping our economically powerful brother to the north (the United States), who, if he imposes a tax on us in free trade zones, will screw us over,” he declared.
President Rodrigo Chavez hinted that migration cooperation also responds to diplomatic and economic pressures that place smaller countries in vulnerable positions vis-à-vis Washington.
Opaque financial agreements with foreign governments
The report also accuses the State Department of establishing opaque financial agreements with foreign governments, some with troubling records on corruption and human rights, with the aim of rapidly expanding the removal program to third countries.
According to its critics, this policy not only redistributes people, but also shifts legal and humanitarian responsibilities to countries that do not always have the necessary institutional capacities to guarantee effective protection.
The agreement with Ecuador
Not all of these agreements include direct financial compensation. One example is the agreement signed with Ecuador, which introduces a different approach within this migration framework.
The agreement stipulates that Ecuador will not return any person transferred from the United States to their country of origin or previous residence while there is a pending immigration application.
Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld announced that the country would accept up to 300 deportees per year under this scheme and would not receive financial compensation for doing so.
However, the announcement generated rejection in a country that is going through a prolonged crisis of violence and that, in 2023 and 2024, registered a significant increase in emigration to the United States, consolidating itself as one of the main South American countries of origin within those migratory flows.
For various sectors, accepting nationals from third countries in that context is contradictory and risky.
Carlos J., a lawyer in Guayaquil, expressed his indignation: “The Ecuadorian government can’t even adequately serve its own citizens, nor is it capable of receiving our deported migrants with dignity, and yet it’s accepting nationals from third countries. It’s outrageous.”
Paraguay, “safe third country”
Ecuador joins Paraguay —the first South American country to sign a “safe third country” agreement with the United States—, which on February 20 also signed a memorandum to collaborate on the repatriation of inadmissible migrants, and Belize, which formalized a similar agreement within this migration externalization strategy.
In response to the criticism, the administration has defended these agreements as a pragmatic response to the refusal of some countries of origin to receive their deported citizens.
In most cases, they maintain, these are people with criminal record.
However, public records indicate that some of the transferred migrants had no convictions in the United States, which has fueled the debate about the legality, proportionality, and respect for due process in these transfers.
For Muzaffar Chishti, senior researcher at the Migration Policy Institute, sending people to third countries represents an outsourcing of legal responsibilities with profound implications.
“Once you take those people out, the laws, the Constitution, and the U.S. regulations no longer apply,” he explained.
Chishti stressed that “the risk is that these practices will dilute the procedural guarantees and protection standards that, in theory, should govern all deportation proceedings.”
Deportations to third countries
Deportations to third countries not only continue, but have become a recurring tool within US immigration policy.
As reported The New York TimesUnder a confidential deportation agreement, the Trump administration moved nine people to Cameroon in January, an African nation that is not the country of origin of any of the deportees.
Almost all of them had protections granted by U.S. courts that prevented them from being sent back to their countries of nationality.
Furthermore, there was no public announcement of a formal agreement with Cameroon to receive migrants from third countries.
The operation was carried out without transparency or clear prior notification to the people transferred.
Several of the deportees, whose cases had not been reported before, said they were unaware of their destination until they were handcuffed and shackled on a Department of Homeland Security flight that departed from Alexandria, Louisiana, on January 14.
According to their testimonies, the authorities did not notify them of their transfer to Cameroon nor did they allow them to challenge the transfer before boarding the plane, despite having existing judicial protections.
Agreements not publicly disclosed.
Concerns grew when authorities in Cameroon arrested four journalists and a lawyer who were trying to document the secret deportation program.
In Yaoundé, the complex already housed African migrants deported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, suggesting that Cameroon may be receiving more people under agreements not publicly disclosed.
Secret transfer
Another alarming case It is the case of a Congolese asylum seeker who had received authorization to remain in the United States.
According to reports cited by international media, her life is in "grave danger" after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) secretly transferred her to an unidentified African country.
Her husband, a local politician feared in his country of origin, continues to search for her in different countries on the continent.
The transfer, without public notification or clarity about his whereabouts, has been cited by human rights organizations as an extreme example of the risks associated with deportations to third countries.
Concern
These cases intensify the warnings from legal and human rights organizations about opaque agreements and extraterritorial transfers.
These agreements, they denounce, restrict access to legal defense, judicial control and effective protection.
For critics, it is not just a stricter immigration policy, but the outsourcing of legal and humanitarian responsibilities to countries that do not always guarantee safety or due process.
Reverse migration
While these deportations continue, so does the so-called reverse migration.
In 2025, it was documented that more than 14,000 migrants returned from Mexico and the United States to countries such as Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia.
Most were Venezuelans, many of them families with children, pregnant women and people in highly vulnerable conditions.
Regional reports They indicate that numerous migrants who were stranded in Mexico or Central America opted to return to South America, making the return a structural component of the current migration landscape.
The lack of clear legal pathways, the tightening of border controls, and the reduction of asylum access mechanisms have contributed to this trend.
A sustained pattern of return
Since the implementation of more restrictive measures starting in 2025, a sustained pattern of return to the south has been maintained.
Organizations specializing in migration monitoring document that reverse migration remained significant during 2025.
And in preliminary analyses for 2026 it is beginning to stand out, although the official data is still incomplete.
Furthermore, demographic projections indicate that net migration could remain low or even negative in 2026.
This would indicate that more people are leaving the United States, being deported, or giving up trying to get there.
Taken together, deportations to third countries and reverse migration create a scenario in which not only is entry restricted, but the regional dynamics of human mobility are profoundly reconfigured.
Borders that never end
Almost a year after meeting Guillermo, from Bogotá, she said that she still hasn't been able to pay off the loans she took out to finance her trip to the United States.
She hasn't been able to find stable employment, and as a result, her daughters haven't been able to return to school. This financial debt is compounded by an even deeper one: emotional debt.
The family continues to grapple with the psychological aftermath of crossing the Darien Gap, the violence they witnessed, and the uncertainty that forced them to retreat.
But Guillermo's story, like that of hundreds of migrants, does not end with the return, nor does it end at the border.
Reverse migration and deportations to third countries reveal a new architecture of migration control.
This became one in which borders shift, are externalized, and multiply far from US territory.
People who never set foot on North American soil were stranded in Central America.
Others who did arrive were sent to countries with which they had no connection, facing detention, stigmatization, and opaque processes.
In this new migration landscape, returning home doesn't always mean protection, and deportation doesn't always mean returning to one's country of origin. Often, it means being left suspended in a legal and human limbo.
And while agreements between governments are negotiated in distant offices, the consequences are experienced in borrowed rooms, in makeshift shelters, in foreign prisons.
The question that remains is not just how many people were returned or transferred. It's how many lives were shattered in the process.
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