I need to take a moment to brag on my home-away-from-home country because it's stepping up in a big way lately.
Costa Rica has always been a United States ally, but it's kind of a quiet one. Sometimes called the "Switzerland of Central America," it enjoys political stability, remains neutral in international conflicts, and, well, it doesn't even have a military.
But a few things have happened in recent years to shake things up. First, like almost every other country in our hemisphere, Costa Rica has seen a rise in crime, largely due to cartel activity. South American narcos use Costa Rica, especially its port cities, as a bridge to get their products into the U.S. and Europe.
Once upon a time, the only crime you might encounter there was petty theft. These days, armed robberies, assaults, burglaries, and scams have increased, as have homicides. There were 580 homicides in 2020; there were 906 in 2023. There were 833 as of mid-December 2025. To put that into perspective, there were 82 total homicides in El Salvador in 2025, and it has about 1.2 million more people than Costa Rica does. Over two-thirds of those were cartel-related.
Second, the country's current president, Rodrigo Chaves, has been consulting with El Salvador's Nayib Bukele on ways to fix this. He started last year by beginning construction on a mega prison. The current right-wing president-elect, Laura Fernández, is already showing signs that she will be even tougher on crime — it's one reason she won the recent presidential election by a much larger margin than expected.
The third factor is that Donald Trump is our president now. While the Joe Biden administration didn't necessarily ignore Costa Rica like it did other countries in the Western Hemisphere, it didn't offer the strength and leadership that Trump does. The Biden administration didn't make crime a priority, as we know. The fact that Trump does has emboldened others in the region because they know we have their backs.
As a matter of fact, Marco Rubio's first trip as Secretary of State was to Latin America and included a stop in Costa Rica, and our relationship has been growing ever since. And I do believe it has gotten even stronger since the Shield of the Americas summit — at which both Chaves and Fernández were guests — because over the last couple of weeks, change has definitely been in the air. It's almost like that officially gave everyone a license to get down to business and turn words into action. That's something we rarely see in government and politics.
Costa Rica actually made two huge announcements this week that prove this.
First, President Chaves announced that he's cutting diplomatic ties with Cuba. He closed the Costa Rican embassy in Havana and sent the Cuban diplomats living in San José packing. His reasons? He said that Costa Rica can no longer support the Cuban regime's human rights abuses and repression and that it's time to do something about Communism in the Western Hemisphere.
"The mistreatment, the repression, the undignified conditions that the inhabitants of that beautiful island endure... Americans say, 'Enough is enough.' Since 1959, the regime has parasitized other countries to give them half of its people," he said. Here's more:
And when Eastern Europe fell, the Iron Curtain, they plunged the Cuban people into the Special Period, where there was enormous suffering—they latched onto Venezuela and its oil.
Do you know what's happening there? Another enormous crisis. And today they must recognize that the communist model has failed in Cuba, as it has failed in every place where it has been implemented.
Only human freedom can lead to progress.
"The hemisphere must be cleansed of communists. It's that simple," he concluded. "Each nation must do it itself, but we will not give legitimacy to the regime that oppresses and tortures almost ten million Cubans today. May God bless the Cuban people, may they soon have freedom, prosperity, and ways to earn a living."
You can watch the speech here, but it is in Spanish.
⚠️⚠️#Ahora. El Presidente de Costa Rica Rodrigo Chaves barre el piso con el régimen cubano.
— Mag Jorge Castro🇨🇺 (@MagJorgeCastro) March 18, 2026
¨Llévense sus diplomáticos de aquí... ya basta, hay que limpiar el hemisferio de comunistas¨.
Anuncian cierre de la Embajada en La Habana. pic.twitter.com/BIs504xnfC
If you'll recall, Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, did the same with his Cuban embassy a couple of weeks ago. It's great to see our partners stepping up to help the United States put pressure on the Cuban regime. As I've written about Venezuela, it will take the entire region to come together to ensure that we fully eradicate communism and tyranny and ensure the people are able to rebuild their nations without them.
The other big announcement Costa Rica made this week is that it made its first large-scale deportation flight of foreign national criminals in irregular migratory status. As I've mentioned, illegal immigration and mass migration are not just United States issues — they're a problem for nearly every country in our hemisphere, whether it's people fleeing countries like Cuba and Venezuela en masse or select criminals doing whatever it is they do. I've actually witnessed a large Venezuelan migrant situation in Costa Rica myself, and it caused a lot of issues.
This flight contained 33 people from countries like Panama, India, China, South Africa, Jamaica, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, and Honduras. They were accused of crimes like sexual abuse of minors, illegal mining, aggravated robbery, drug trafficking, and kidnapping and extortion. The U.S. helped by funding the flight and figuring out some of the logistics — this is exactly what Trump and Rubio promised at the Shield of the Americas summit. You partner with us to get rid of crime in the region, and we'll help you clean up your country.
And Costa Rica is already seeing the gains, not just from this week, but from everything it's done in the past year to work with the United States to fight organized crime and drug trafficking. Tourism, which Costa Rica's economy is heavily dependent upon, is up about 14% from this time last year.
We can count on Fernández, who will officially become Costa Rica's president in May, to keep this up in the years to come. She's extremely pro-U.S., and, as I said, she's tough on crime. Her big election win was a mandate from the people.
That's good news for us. When the other countries in our backyard are safe, the United States is safer too.
