Скачать или смотреть Costa Rica and Panama coordinate to move southbound migrants

(4 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Peñas Blancas, Costa Rica - 3 March 2025
1. Various of migrants crossing border from Nicaragua into Costa Rica
2. Mid of security officials with migrants
3. Various of Costa Rica' Security Minister, Mario Zamora Cordero, and Panama's Security Minister, Frank Ábrego, looking at buses with migrants
4. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Mario Zamora, Costa Rican Security Minister:
"We have informed our Nicaraguan migration counterparts of this very issue, in order to get their contribution so that migrants passing through Nicaragua are quickly directed to the formal borders, where we will provide them with legal permission to pass through Costa Rica and in this way they will not be at the mercy of the mafias.”
5. Various of Nicaraguan side of border with Costa Rica
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Mario Zamora, Costa Rican Security Minister:
"We don't have clear data on how big the flow southwards is, we'll find out in the coming weeks or months. However, we are already taking decisions in advance to have the systems in place to manage the flows, so that we don't have a migration crisis when it comes to dealing with these people.”
7. Various of migrants being checked by Costa Rican police
8. Costa Rica security personnel at border
9. Various of migrants walking to pay their fare to travel to San José
10. Venezuelan migrant Bárbara Somayor paying her bus fare
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Bárbara Somayor, Venezuelan migrant:
"I think it would be better if they offered us transportation by air, because boats are a risk for both adults and children. But, well, one has to take the risk."
12. Various of migrants filling out Costa Rica migration forms
13. Various of migrants walking towards waiting buses
STORYLINE:
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.

Both countries have struggled to find their footing in recent weeks in the new reality of migrants heading south, turned back by the closure of the United States border to asylum seekers since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January.

The security ministers from both countries met Monday in Peñas Blancas, a border post between Nicaragua and Costa Rica where southbound migrants will board buses to a Costa Rican government facility at the Panama border.

From there Panama will bus them to its Darien province, which borders Colombia.

Costa Rican Security Minister Mario Zamora said that the effort will focus on Colombians, Venezuelans and Ecuadorians who are trying to reach their countries.

He said that by organizing the transportation they hope to protect migrants from human traffickers.

His Panamanian counterpart, Frank Ábrego, said the idea is to offer a more regulated transit across Costa Rica and Panama.

On Monday, small groups of migrants carrying backpacks crossed the Nicaraguan border into Costa Rica, cleared immigration, and boarded southbound buses.

Last week, southbound migrants boarded boats in a Panamanian port on the Caribbean sea to be carried to the Panama-Colombian border where they could continue south and avoid a treacherous land crossing of the Darien Gap.

Venezuelan Bárbara Somayor stopped to buy her bus ticket at the border post.

“I think it would be better if they offered us air transportation, because boats pose a risk for both adults and children,” she said. “But, well, one has to take the risk.”







AP video shot by Berny Araya



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