This is the transcript of episode 74 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
DEPORTEE NAMED GOAR TOPLAKALTSIAN: We were deceived; they told us nothing. They sent us on a military aircraft to Arizona, and then put us on a passenger plane, meaning we did not know where they were taking us.
GRESSIER, HOST: That’s audio from Deutsche Welle, of a Russian national deported from the U.S. last February to Costa Rica alongside dozens of other migrants. Officials there just released a report finding sweeping abuses against the group on Costa Rican soil.
Abuses against deportees in Costa Rica
Early last year, the Costa Rican government launched a mission at the country’s main international airport and an embattled facility near the border with Panama. Their goal was to track the arrival of 200 people deported from the United States.
On February 20, 2025, 135 people arrived on a charter flight. Another 65 followed five days later. They were from nations including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China.
Now, Costa Rica’s National Mechanism to Prevent Torture published the mission’s findings. They concluded that Costa Rica had become part of an “international chain of violations” of migrants’ rights.
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Most of the group was completely uninformed. They didn’t even know they were in Costa Rica. They were greeted by a large armed police deployment. Male deportees showed deep marks on their skin from shackles on their hands, feet, and hips during flight. Women and children were in a state of visible fear.
They were put on a seven-hour bus ride to the southern border without clear knowledge due to the language barrier.
Authorities classified the group under “Assisted Voluntary Return,” but that term is a lie. They were expelled by force. Authorities retained their passports and visas. It became de facto deprivation of liberty.
The International Organization for Migration received U.S. funding to manage this group. This created a disparity.
Some migrants were set up with private rooms, while others, especially those who had been there for weeks, were relegated to military cots or sleeping bags in open areas.
Authorities left them incommunicado. While other migrants were allowed to leave to run errands, the 200 U.S. deportees were not.
Last year, in a radio interview, Migration Director Omar Bonilla rejected allegations of mistreatment or torture, though he admitted that improvements could be made.
An isolation cell failed to meet requirements for exceptional use, clear justification, adequate regulation, defined protocols, and detailed documentation. Medical triage found cases of depression and self-harm.
This report came after authorities renewed their agreement this March to receive more deportees every week in Costa Rica.
Housing crisis in El Salvador
In El Salvador, only half the population has access to home ownership, according to a 2024 state housing survey. The rest have to seek out alternatives that fit often low and unstable incomes.
José Antonio Velásquez, president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Construction, said in July 2024 that the country needs at least 400,000 homes to address a housing shortage in a country of 6.4 million people.
This is Housing Minister Michelle Sol in a May 14 TV interview on how to secure a home:
SOL: Either you inherit money from your family and keep it in a savings account, then come and pay for it in cash, or you save and save for 10, 15, or 20 years, until you have the money. Then you either pay cash or go to the bank to get a loan.
GRESSIER: But that proposal is out of step with most Salvadorans. According to the latest household survey, 84.1 percent of the population has monthly incomes below $435.
Although the Social Housing Fund offers mortgages, they don’t cover market prices. Housing projects are geared toward people with monthly incomes exceeding $1,500.
A 2025 study by the Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Minimum Housing found that many families seek affordable alternatives on their own in major cities, such as living in communal houses known as mesones. Families pay between $50 and $200 a month for a single room, often in poor condition.
Many don’t have leases, and in some cases, they don’t even know the owners of the rooms they rent.
The Constitution says the state must promote homeownership, but those living in mesones are part of the population that has to sort out its right to housing on its own.
The housing crisis is not new in El Salvador. For decades, access to a home has depended more on income and connections than on public policies capable of guaranteeing that right.
While thousands of families scrape by in mesones, officials including President Nayib Bukele and his family, have acquired 34 properties valued at $9.2 million.
Protests in Panama over copper mine
Next, to Panama. Last week, hundreds protested against the reopening of Cobre Panama, an open-pit copper mine whose concession to a Canadian company was ruled unconstitutional twice by the Supreme Court.
Despite public opposition that sparked widespread protests in 2023, the business-facing President José Raúl Mulino has refused to order the complete closure of the mine, and the country’s only coal-fired power plant continues to operate.
According to an investigation by the independent outlet Concolón, Panama has thus failed to meet its international commitments to decarbonize, departing from its promise to eliminate coal-fired electricity by 2026.
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Cobre Panamá, the mine where the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals operates the thermoelectric plant, is located in the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, one of the most biodiverse and most threatened ecosystems in Latin America.
According to sustainability data reported by the company, the thermoelectric plant contributed to the more than 11 million tons of greenhouse gases emitted between 2018 and 2024, stoking the global climate crisis.
Internal reports from the Ministry of the Environment obtained by Concolón show 232 environmental violations at the Cobre Panama mine over ten years, including river pollution, deforestation, and high risks from the tailings dam.
According to Concolón, the local subsidiary of the Canadian company, Minera Panama, has suppliers who were donors to Mulino’s presidential campaign, as well as eight government officials who have ties to the company and family members.
In May 2025, although he said before he was elected that he would comply with the court's ruling, Mulino gave a green light to the thermal power plant, the exportation of copper accumulated at the mine, and importation of coal.
Since 2015, Panama has talked about decarbonizing the country.
The thermoelectric plant is expected to remain in operation until 2035, under the argument that it is a valuable asset to the national power grid. Mulino plans to decide the mine’s future in June, once a general audit of the Canadian company is presented.
But as our colleagues at Concolón report, in the five-year Paris Agreement plan that Mulino submitted to the U.N. last year, the country didn’t even mention decarbonization, thermal power plants, or coal.
This episode was written by Gabriel Labrador, Leyrian Colón Santiago, and Yuliana Ramazzini, with editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.