‘They threw us out like baggage’: Russian family deported from US to Costa Rica still in limbo

Almost a year after Donald Trump strong-armed a deal with Costa Rica to receive 200 people from other countries who were being deported from the United States after being denied the right to request asylum, a small handful remain there in legal limbo and fighting for compensation.

The asylum seekers flown to Costa Rica in chains last February, despite not being criminals, were from 20 other countries, chiefly parts of Asia and Africa and included 81 children. They had all tried to request refuge at the US-Mexico border but were quickly removed from American soil after Trump returned to the White House and effectively closed the US asylum system. In the face of a variety of political difficulties with deporting them to their native countries, the Trump administration sent them to Costa Rica, as he did others to Panama.

Among the deportees to Costa Rica was Alexander, a 37-year-old Russian man, his wife and their young son, who remain there and are trying to come to terms with how they were handled by the Trump administration. They are also fighting for justice from the Central American authorities for putting them in detention after they arrived from the US. His real name is being withheld by the Guardian and his wife and son’s names are not being disclosed, to keep the family safe from the Russian government.

“They threw us out like baggage,” Alexander said of the US, in an interview with the Guardian in Costa Rica.

Already bewildered at being flown to, from their point of view, a mystery country, Alexander and his family were then horrified that they and the other deportees from the US were locked up for two months in Costa Rica, which Human Rights Watch at the time called “reprehensible”.

The Costa Rican government had claimed it would be a safe haven for those deported and would act as a bridge, helping people return