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Thursday, February 20, 2025

White House claims victory in a showdown with Colombia over taking deported migrants

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24 days ago
20250127

The White House claimed vic­to­ry in a show­down with Colom­bia over ac­cept­ing flights of de­port­ed mi­grants from the U.S. on Sun­day, hours af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened steep tar­iffs on im­ports and oth­er sanc­tions on the long­time U.S. part­ner.

Long close part­ners in an­ti-nar­cotics ef­forts, the U.S. and Colom­bia clashed Sun­day over the de­por­ta­tion of mi­grants and im­posed tar­iffs on each oth­er’s goods in a show of what oth­er coun­tries could face if they in­ter­vene in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s crack­down on il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion. The White House held up the episode as a warn­ing to oth­er na­tions who might seek to im­pede his plans.

Ear­li­er, the U.S. pres­i­dent had or­dered visa re­stric­tions, 25% tar­iffs on all Colom­bian in­com­ing goods, which would be raised to 50% in one week, and oth­er re­tal­ia­to­ry mea­sures sparked by Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro’s de­ci­sion to re­ject two Colom­bia-bound U.S. mil­i­tary air­craft car­ry­ing mi­grants af­ter Petro ac­cused Trump of not treat­ing im­mi­grants with dig­ni­ty dur­ing de­por­ta­tion. Petro al­so an­nounced a re­tal­ia­to­ry 25% in­crease in Colom­bian tar­iffs on U.S. goods.

Trump said the mea­sures were nec­es­sary be­cause Petro’s de­ci­sion “jeop­ar­dized” na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the U.S. by block­ing the de­por­ta­tion flights.

“These mea­sures are just the be­gin­ning,” Trump wrote on his so­cial me­dia plat­form Truth So­cial. “We will not al­low the Colom­bian Gov­ern­ment to vi­o­late its le­gal oblig­a­tions with re­gard to the ac­cep­tance and re­turn of the Crim­i­nals they forced in­to the Unit­ed States.”

Press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said in a late Sun­day state­ment that the “Gov­ern­ment of Colom­bia has agreed to all of Pres­i­dent Trump’s terms, in­clud­ing the un­re­strict­ed ac­cep­tance of all il­le­gal aliens from Colom­bia re­turned from the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing on U.S. mil­i­tary air­craft, with­out lim­i­ta­tion or de­lay.”

Leav­itt said the tar­iff or­ders will be “held in re­serve, and not signed.” But Leav­itt said Trump would main­tain visa re­stric­tions on Colom­bian of­fi­cials and en­hanced cus­toms in­spec­tions of goods from the coun­try, “un­til the first plane­load of Colom­bian de­por­tees is suc­cess­ful­ly re­turned.”

The Colom­bian gov­ern­ment late Sun­day said it con­sid­ered as “over­come” the episode with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and Petro re­post­ed the state­ment from the White House on X.

“We have over­come the im­passe with the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment,” said Colom­bian For­eign Min­is­ter Luis Gilber­to Muril­lo. “We will con­tin­ue to re­ceive Colom­bians who re­turn as de­por­tees, guar­an­tee­ing them de­cent con­di­tions as cit­i­zens sub­ject to rights.”

Muril­lo added that the South Amer­i­can coun­try’s pres­i­den­tial air­craft is avail­able to fa­cil­i­tate the re­turn of mi­grants who were to ar­rive hours ear­li­er on the U.S. mil­i­tary air­planes.

Ear­li­er Sun­day, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio an­nounced he was au­tho­riz­ing the visa re­stric­tions on Colom­bian gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and their fam­i­lies “who were re­spon­si­ble for the in­ter­fer­ence of U.S. repa­tri­a­tion flight op­er­a­tions.” They were be­ing im­posed on top of the State De­part­ment’s move to sus­pend the pro­cess­ing of visas at the U.S. Em­bassy in Colom­bia’s cap­i­tal, Bo­go­ta.

Petro had said ear­li­er that his gov­ern­ment would not ac­cept flights car­ry­ing mi­grants de­port­ed from the U.S. un­til the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion cre­ates a pro­to­col that treats them with “dig­ni­ty.” Petro made the an­nounce­ment in two X posts, one of which in­clud­ed a news video of mi­grants re­port­ed­ly de­port­ed to Brazil walk­ing on a tar­mac with re­straints on their hands and feet.

“A mi­grant is not a crim­i­nal and must be treat­ed with the dig­ni­ty that a hu­man be­ing de­serves,” Petro said. “That is why I re­turned the U.S. mil­i­tary planes that were car­ry­ing Colom­bian mi­grants... In civil­ian planes, with­out be­ing treat­ed like crim­i­nals, we will re­ceive our fel­low cit­i­zens.”

Af­ter Trump’s ear­li­er tar­iff threat, Petro said in a post on X that he had or­dered the “for­eign trade min­is­ter to raise im­port tar­iffs from the U.S. by 25%.”

Colom­bia has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the U.S.’s top al­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca. But their re­la­tion­ship has strained since Petro, a for­mer guer­ril­la, be­came Colom­bia’s first left­ist pres­i­dent in 2022 and sought dis­tance from the U.S.

Colom­bia ac­cept­ed 475 de­por­ta­tion flights from the U.S. from 2020 to 2024, fifth be­hind Guatemala, Hon­duras, Mex­i­co and El Sal­vador, ac­cord­ing to Wit­ness at the Bor­der, an ad­vo­ca­cy group that tracks flight da­ta. It ac­cept­ed 124 de­por­ta­tion flights in 2024.

Colom­bia is al­so among the coun­tries that last year be­gan ac­cept­ing U.S.-fund­ed de­por­ta­tion flights from Pana­ma.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment from The As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­gard­ing air­craft and pro­to­cols used in de­por­ta­tions to Colom­bia.

“This is a clear mes­sage we are send­ing that coun­tries have an oblig­a­tion to ac­cept repa­tri­a­tion flights,” a se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial told AP. The of­fi­cial spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to dis­cuss is­sue pub­licly.

Ru­bio in a state­ment said Petro “can­celled his au­tho­riza­tion” for the flights when the air­craft were in the air.

Colom­bians emerged in re­cent years as a ma­jor pres­ence on the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co, aid­ed in part by a visa regime that al­lows them to eas­i­ly fly to Mex­i­co and avoid trekking though the treach­er­ous Darien Gap. They ranked fourth with 127,604 ar­rests for il­le­gal cross­ings dur­ing a 12-month pe­ri­od through Sep­tem­ber, be­hind Mex­i­cans, Guatemalans and Venezue­lans.

Mex­i­co hasn’t im­posed visa re­stric­tions on Colom­bians, as they have on Venezue­lans, Ecuadore­ans and Pe­ru­vians.

Petro’s gov­ern­ment in a state­ment lat­er an­nounced that the South Amer­i­can coun­try’s pres­i­den­tial air­craft had been made avail­able to fa­cil­i­tate the re­turn of mi­grants who were to ar­rive hours ear­li­er on the U.S. mil­i­tary air­planes and guar­an­tee them “dig­ni­fied con­di­tions.”

As part of a flur­ry of ac­tions to make good on Trump’s cam­paign promis­es to crack down on il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion, his gov­ern­ment is us­ing ac­tive-du­ty mil­i­tary to help se­cure the bor­der and car­ry out de­por­ta­tions.

Two U.S. Air Force C-17 car­go planes car­ry­ing mi­grants re­moved from the U.S. touched down ear­ly Fri­day in Guatemala. That same day, Hon­duras re­ceived two de­por­ta­tion flights car­ry­ing a to­tal of 193 peo­ple.

Colom­bia is the U.S.’s fourth-largest over­seas sup­pli­er of crude oil, ship­ping about 209,000 bar­rels of oil per day last year, al­though boom­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion has re­duced the U.S.’ de­pen­dence on for­eign oil. The South Amer­i­can coun­try is al­so the U.S.’s largest sup­pli­er of fresh cut flow­ers. —BO­GO­TA, Colom­bia (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CÍA CANO, ZEKE MILLER, ASTRID SUÁREZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Regi­na Gar­cia Cano re­port­ed from Cara­cas, Venezuela, and Zeke Miller from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jill Colvin in New York, Joshua Good­man in Mi­a­mi, and El­liot Sp­a­gat in San Diego con­tributed to this re­port.


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