Costa Rica returns African migrants to Panama
FIFTY-SIX migrants from Africa and Asia who crossed into Costa Rica’s on Monday March 28 have been returned to Panama say Costa Rican immigration authorities.
They were stopped after the government announced bumped up police presence on the border because of large numbers of Cuban migrants camped out in Panama.
The migrants, without authorization to enter Costa Rica, were traveling on foot in groups of roughly 20 to 25 people, reports the Tico Times.
The largest number of migrants were from Ghana but authorities also detained people from Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria and Mali., One was from Afghanistan. Of the initial contingent of 116, sixty were allowed to stay.
No arrests were made for human smuggling.
Many migrants from Africa and Asia fly to South American countries that do not require visas and then cross illegally into neighboring countries en-route to to the United States and Canada.
It’s the same path that thousands of Cubans used in recent years leading to the recent border crisis Costa Rica when a dispute with Nicaragua left 7,800 migrants stranded Most of those migrants have since made it to the U.S.
