A group of lawyers filed a lawsuit on Thursday before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child against the Costa Rican government for allegedly violating the rights of minors deported from the United States.

Lawyers from the Global Strategic Litigation Council, Instituto Internacional de Responsabilidad Social y Derechos Humanos, and the Transnational Disputes Clinic at Cornell Law School claimed that Costa Rica has detained over 80 migrant children deported from the US for over 50 days. The lawyers said that the continued detention of these children by the Costa Rica government violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects human rights of minors such as the right to liberty, education, and healthcare. Lead counsel Silvia Serna Román said that the situation in Costa Rica is a humanitarian failure and called for these children to be released from detention and provided with adequate shelter and protection.

The children being held were part of a group of 200 people deported to Costa Rica from the US in February 2025 and were from countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. The Costa Rican and US governments agreed to collaborate on the repatriation of undocumented immigrants in February. According to Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles, the deported individuals will be held in Costa Rica for up to six weeks before being sent to their home countries.

Following recent developments in US immigration policy, Human Rights Watch urged Costa Rica to allow migrants deported from the US to seek asylum and emphasized that people should not be sent back to countries where they might face persecution.

In February 2025, the Global Strategic Litigation Council filed another lawsuit against the government of Panama at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over its detention of migrants deported from the US. The group stated: “This is a critical case that could set a precedent for how Latin American states push back against regressive migration policies imposed from Washington.”