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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Hundreds of US visa appointments cancelled in Colombia following spat over deportation flights

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24 days ago
20250127
A U.S. consular official explains to people with scheduled visa document submissions that their appointments were canceled due to Colombian President Gustavo Petro's refusal to accept repatriation flights of Colombian citizens from the U.S., at a U.S. Embassy Applicant Service Center in Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

A U.S. consular official explains to people with scheduled visa document submissions that their appointments were canceled due to Colombian President Gustavo Petro's refusal to accept repatriation flights of Colombian citizens from the U.S., at a U.S. Embassy Applicant Service Center in Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Fernando Vergara

Visa ap­point­ments at the U.S. Em­bassy in Colom­bia were can­celled Mon­day fol­low­ing a dis­pute over de­por­ta­tion flights from the U.S. that near­ly turned in­to a cost­ly trade war be­tween the two coun­tries.

Dozens of Colom­bians showed up out­side the U.S. Em­bassy in Bo­go­ta and were hand­ed let­ters by lo­cal staff that said their ap­point­ments had been can­celled “due to the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to ac­cept repa­tri­a­tion flights of Colom­bian na­tion­als.” Oth­ers with visa ap­point­ments for Mon­day re­ceived sim­i­lar email mes­sages.

Ob­tain­ing an ap­point­ment can take up to two years.

Ten­sions be­tween Colom­bia and the Unit­ed States es­ca­lat­ed Sun­day af­ter Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro wrote an ear­ly morn­ing mes­sage on X say­ing he would not al­low two U.S. air force planes car­ry­ing Colom­bian de­por­tees to land in the coun­try. He had pre­vi­ous­ly au­tho­rized the flights.

Petro al­so shared a video that showed an­oth­er group of de­por­tees re­port­ed­ly ar­riv­ing in Brazil with shack­les on their legs. He said Colom­bia would on­ly ac­cept de­por­ta­tion flights when the Unit­ed States had es­tab­lished pro­to­cols that en­sured the “dig­ni­fied treat­ment” of ex­pelled mi­grants.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­spond­ed with a post of his own on Truth So­cial, in which he called for 25% emer­gency tar­iffs on Colom­bian ex­ports to the Unit­ed States, and al­so said that the U.S. visas of Colom­bian gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials would be re­voked, while goods com­ing from the South Amer­i­can coun­try would face en­hanced cus­toms in­spec­tions.

Mean­while, the State De­part­ment said Sun­day it would stop is­su­ing visas to Colom­bian na­tion­als un­til de­por­ta­tion flights re­sumed.

Ten­sions de­creased Sun­day night fol­low­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the coun­tries, with the White House say­ing in a state­ment that Colom­bia had al­lowed the re­sump­tion of de­por­ta­tion flights and “agreed to all of Pres­i­dent Trump’s terms,” in­clud­ing the ar­rival of de­por­tees on mil­i­tary flights.

In the past, most Colom­bians re­moved from the Unit­ed States had been ar­riv­ing on char­ter flights or­ga­nized by U.S. gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors.

The White House said tar­iffs on Colom­bian ex­ports would be put on hold, but added that visa re­stric­tions on Colom­bian of­fi­cials and en­hanced cus­tom in­spec­tions would re­main “un­til the first plane­load of Colom­bian de­por­tees is suc­cess­ful­ly re­turned.”

The State De­part­ment has not re­spond­ed to re­quests for com­ment on the re­sump­tion of visa ap­point­ments.

Last year, more than 1.6 mil­lion Colom­bians trav­elled to the U.S. legal­ly, ac­cord­ing to a re­port by the Min­istry of Com­merce. The re­port said the Unit­ed States was the top des­ti­na­tion for Colom­bians trav­el­ing abroad. —BO­GOTÁ, Colom­bia (AP)

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Sto­ry by MANUEL RUE­DA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press


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