Hundreds of Venezuelan, Haitian and Ecuadorian migrants pressed their faces to the windows as they looked out onto a sign that read “Welcome to Costa Rica.” But few of them will see more of the country than the winding roads through foggy glass.
That’s because last week Costa Rica and Panama announced that, amid a historic crush of people headed to the United States, thousands of migrants a day would be bussed from the jungle-clad Darien Gap through their territories to the Nicaraguan border.
The move is the latest patchwork solution by governments in Central America that often have appeared more concerned with lessening the impact on their own nations than complying with pressure from the Biden administration to keep migration levels in check.
Angelys, who left Venezuela in October due to the economic crisis in her country, said she had hoped to rest after trekking days through the rugged jungle dividing Colombia and Panama.
They’re dropped off in cramped detention facilities where most sleep on green army cots, bunk beds, cardboard or in tents on the ground where some say liquid from portable toilets leaks.
Angelys, the Venezuelan mother, was among dozens of people waiting in line at Western Union inside the facility for hours for a transfer of $200 from her husband in Chicago to buy bus tickets.
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