More than 1,000 migrants, most of them Cubans, thronged and then stormed across Panama’s border into Costa Rica on Wednesday in a desperate bid to reach the US, officials said.
Although all but 120 voluntarily returned to Panama hours later, the incident risked reviving a recent crisis in which thousands of Cubans determined to make it to the US became stranded in Costa Rica because their passage north through Central America was blocked.
Television images showed migrants clashing with officials trying to stop them in Costa Rica’s border town of Paso Canoas. Several car windows were broken in the scuffles.
Costa Rican officials said some Africans and Asians were among those entering and vowed to deport back to Panama any undocumented migrants, blaming Washington for “promoting” the flow of Cubans.
People leaving Communist-run Cuba are the only migrants who — if they simply make it to US soil — after just a medical clearance are granted temporary US residence and the right to work legally, and some healthcare.
Costa Rican Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel Gonzalez told a news conference that migrants were wrong to think they could push their way over the border.
“If they are trying to swamp Costa Rica by sending in avalanches of people, they are mistaken,” he said. “With force, not even their little toes will enter.”
Later in the day, most of the migrants had returned to Panama, Costa Rican Ministry for Public Security spokesman Carlos Hidalgo said.
Amid many Cubans’ concerns that they might soon lose the generous US migrant benefits, the US Coast Guard has seen a spike in Cubans arriving in the US by land and sea since Washington and Havana announced they would begin normalizing relations in December 2014.
More than 43,000 Cubans entered the US by sea and land during the last fiscal year — which ended in September last year — a figure not seen for decades.
Costa Rica said it was reinforcing security on its southern border with Panama to prevent more crossings and deployed about 150 police officers at the flashpoint, Hidalgo said, calling the situation “under control and peaceful.”
“Today, more than a thousand undocumented migrants violently and with force entered Costa Rica, which represents an affront to the Costa Rican people,” the Costa Rican presidency said in a statement.
It said that the country was unable to cope with such an influx and that it had just cleared out 8,000 Cubans who had been blocked in the country when its northern neighbor Nicaragua closed its border to them five months ago.
Those stranded Cubans had been put on special flights skipping over Nicaragua, to either El Salvador or Mexico, with most of them paying their own way.
The incident deepened animosity between Nicaragua — an ally to the Cuban government — and Costa Rica, whose ties have been strained by border disputes.
The Costa Rican presidency denounced US policy saying that it “fosters conditions for human trafficking.”
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