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Throughout 2025, a series of executive actions by the Trump administration, including the indefinite suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), the closure of Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs), the termination and attempted termination of various humanitarian parole programs, and the closure of the U.S. southern border to asylum-seekers, have fundamentally destabilized the migration landscape in Latin America. In Costa Rica, these policies have not only halted lawful pathways, but they have also forced vulnerable families into dangerous irregular routes, and in some cases, created higher risks of prolonged family separation.
The Safe Mobility Initiative (SMI), once a beacon of hope for forcibly displaced people in Latin America seeking resettlement to the United States, remains effectively dismantled a year after the closure was announced. Following the January 20th, 2025, Executive Order “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” SMO operations in Costa Rica and elsewhere were suspended.
The Local Reality in Costa Rica: Stranded Families and Follow-up Gap Creating an Information Vacuum
In the first week of December 2025, we partnered with the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) in Costa Rica for a two-day “training of trainers” and stakeholder engagement focused on navigating the complexities of U.S. immigration law and policy, suspension of lawful pathways, and the shifting regional migration patterns. In-depth breakout sessions on policy gaps and the aftermath of the Safe Mobility Initiative’s closure, as well as meetings with local community and faith-based organizations, revealed a harrowing aftermath. Many individuals and families in contact with local immigrant rights organizations, who were expecting to resettle to the United States through the SMI, had already sold their homes, ended their leases, liquidated belongings, and withdrawn their children from school in anticipation of resettlement.
In addition, USAID funding cuts forced local organizations to cancel follow-ups of people who had cases pending through the SMI. As a result, the current status of thousands of families with pending SMI cases is unknown. A year after the suspension, there is a desperate need for information. Families are left in the dark about the future of their cases, for example if they will ever be offered the opportunity to resettle in other countries like Spain or Canada.
Escalating Risks of Family Separation and Exploitation
The dismantling of legal pathways does not stop forced migration, it merely makes it more dangerous. By removing processes for safe migration, these policies have forced families to rely on irregular migration, increasing the risk of becoming permanently separated from their loved ones. For Nicaraguans in Costa Rica it heightens the risk of continued persecution, and for some even death.
As families navigate treacherous routes (including taking precarious boats through the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, as well as passing through the Nicaraguan border or the Darien Gap), they become targets for human trafficking and kidnapping. During our meetings with Costa Rican organizations we also learned that many families end up separated while making the perilous journey, in part because some of them become victims of these and other crimes, or because they lack money to continue the journey. Some parents, especially fathers, are forced to make the decision to stay behind and send their children or their wife and children ahead if they can’t afford to pay for everyone in the family to travel. The father often stays behind until they earn enough money to also make the journey.
This forced migration has also caused thousands of migrant children to lose access to education. Many families who had been approved for resettlement to the United States had withdrawn their children from school in preparation for imminent resettlement. Their situation often became even more precarious after the Safe Mobility Offices closed, and some of these children have now been out of school for over a year.
For Nicaraguan asylum seekers, the situation is particularly dire. For the past seven years, Costa Rica has been the primary host country for Nicaraguans fleeing persecution in their home country. Unfortunately, Costa Rica’s geographic proximity to Nicaragua allows transnational repression to persist. Exiled journalists and political dissidents have reported the existence of Nicaraguan state sponsored surveillance networks in Costa Rica who track, coerce and intimidate dissidents they want to silence. Nicaraguans fleeing persecution are often targeted or even killed within Costa Rica. Furthermore, according to reports the Nicaraguan consular authorities in Costa Rica have weaponized the denial of passports against people who have been labeled as “threats to the government”, effectively rendering them stateless. The suspension of U.S. protection programs has trapped people in a “death zone” where they are neither safe to stay nor able to leave.
Based on the current needs, the local and international organizations in Costa Rica whom we met with identified the following as the top priorities to improve the safety and wellbeing of forcibly displaced people:
- Oppose the United States’ Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs)
- Support Venezuelans and Nicaraguans in the United States and in Costa Rica
- Continued public advocacy efforts to humanize migration
We Must Restore the Principle of Family Unity and Humanize Migration
Overall, the United States’ policy changes have created more danger for people fleeing persecution, both internally in Costa Rica and throughout the Americas. The revocation of lawful status, such as parole and TPS, has stripped people of safety and placed them at risk of deportation and family separation. The U.S. should restore those protections. as well as effective and safe legal pathways for family reunification. Finally, the U.S. must reverse course on recent policy decisions and fund humanitarian aid in a robust way, instead of fueling policies that fracture family units and perpetuate fear.