Miranda Villasmil guided her daughter and son among hundreds of crowded migrants, many still covered in mud and inflamed from their journey from South America to Costa Rica. The family of three carried only two grocery bags with their belongings from their lives in Venezuela. When they reached the line of buses that would take them directly to the border with Nicaragua, Villasmil was so relieved that she sent text messages to her family back home who were also considering leaving. The Costa Rican government, she wrote, was willing to provide a safe passage: “There have been no obstacles,” she said. “We keep moving forward,” Villasmil told her family in Venezuela.
Villasmil is one of thousands of migrants who have used the new bus transfer programs adopted by Costa Rica and other Central American countries trying to deal with a historic migration flow crossing their borders. Over 400,000 people have crossed into Costa Rica from Panama this year, according to Panamanian authorities, double the number of border crossings from last year. This has led to the establishment of huge tent camps along Costa Rica’s borders and has generated complaints from business owners and an increase in abusive human trafficking operations.
In October, the Costa Rican government declared a national emergency and developed a plan with Panama to transfer migrants from their southern border to the northern border. Costa Rican authorities claim that the bus transportation program has eliminated the camps, reduced tension in border communities, and provided people with a safer alternative to paying human traffickers. Similar programs have also emerged in certain areas of Honduras and Mexico.
However, this strategy has raised concerns in the United States, which has urged its Latin American allies to discourage people from making the dangerous journey north and encourage them to seek refugee status closer to their home countries. Instead, transportation seems to be creating a fast track to the north.
“The United States wants to contain people,” said Marta Blanco, executive director of Fundación Cadena, a nonprofit humanitarian organization currently assisting migrants at a Costa Rican bus terminal. “This is to keep sending people, to simply keep the flow active.”
Officials from the Joe Biden administration, who are not authorized to make public statements, say they have raised their concerns behind closed doors with both the Costa Rican and Panamanian governments, while publicly praising both countries for their collaboration on other security and immigration agreements. Biden even hosted Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves at the White House in August before sending $12 million to the country to strengthen its immigration policies.
But US officials have also argued that bus routes only incentivize more migrants to leave their countries and make the dangerous journey to the US-Mexico border. Their Central American counterparts argue that the bus system makes the journey less dangerous.
“There is no capacity to limit that migration flow, but it must be managed,” said José Pablo Vindas, coordinator of Costa Rica’s migration police, in an interview from the migrant bus terminal, which was once a pencil factory.
Around 30 buses, each with 55 immigrants, enter and exit the facilities every day. In one week, more than 14,000 people were transported by bus from Panama to Costa Rica’s northern border, according to Costa Rican authorities.
“It’s not to discourage them, but the government is trying to provide a safe and orderly journey,” said Vindas. “I think it’s more dangerous for them to cross freely or be taken by people involved in illicit human trafficking, under conditions that they may not deserve.”
But some families said they found those same conditions at the bus terminal. The bus program is not free and has added another fee to the many expenses migrants face on their costly journey north. And it can also be dangerous. Earlier this year, at least 39 people died when a bus carrying migrants plunged off a cliff in Panama. Last month, 18 migrants died in a bus crash in Mexico, and an accident in Honduras left four people dead and dozens injured.
In Panama, each person must pay $60 to be transported by bus to Costa Rica’s main terminal. They must then pay another $30 to board a bus that will take them to the border with Nicaragua. The fees are charged by authorized bus companies.
On a recent day in October, dozens of frantic families lined up at a money transfer office inside the terminal to receive funds from their relatives for a bus ticket. Travelers can only leave the facilities on a bus, Vindas said. They cannot simply walk away from the terminal.
In a nearby building, there were military bunk beds and cots for about 380 people, but they were already full. Vindas said the facility normally housed over 1,000 people and that on a recent day, it had accommodated up to 1,800, with hundreds sleeping on the floor.
José Diaz and his family had been traveling for 20 days when they arrived at the bus terminal. They were relieved to be able to board one of the buses in Panama provided by the government that would take them north. But soon they realized they needed more bus tickets and had spent their last $120 in Panama just to get here.
The Diaz family had two options, a terminal worker said: a relative could transfer them money or they could wait in the dark underground passage of the bus terminal, along with dozens of other families, and sleep on the minimal lighting floor. With the terminal overcrowded, he prepared his daughters to head downstairs.
“From Panama, they bring us like this, like prisoners, without going anywhere,” Diaz said. “They think we have a lot of money. What money, when we’re actually looking for a future?”
Downstairs, in the darkness, families huddled on bedsheets on the cement floor or leaned against plastic construction barricades. There was a bunk bed structure with no mattresses. Small children in diapers ran around bewildered adults. Desperate parents tried to find staff members to help their sick children.
Some migrants said they did not receive regular meals, and when they asked for water, they were told to drink the rainwater dripping from the floor above. Many said the only way to make enough money was to leave the facilities and work, something the authorities have prohibited.
In an interview, Marta Vindas, Director of Migration and Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica, rejected comparisons of the bus terminal to a detention center and assured that migrants had access to bathrooms, meals, and numerous humanitarian organizations present at the site.
“That is a transit zone, that is the reason why they are there, to flow to the other border,” Vindas said.
Other Central American countries have also adopted bus transfer practices. Migration and transportation officials in Honduras created direct bus routes to Guatemala as a safe alternative for migrants. In Mexico, transportation programs are more sporadic. In Oaxaca, the government set up centers from where buses take migrants north to alleviate pressure on the country’s southern border, but they have also flown migrants south, away from the US border.
In the United States, the states of Texas and Florida have transported migrants by bus to cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and several others to reduce the concentration of people arriving at border cities. However, Republicans have also exploited this practice to punish migrants.