Less than a week after Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, his administration has collided frontally with Gustavo Petro’s left government in Colombia. The South American president has announced in the early hours of this Sunday that he will not allow the entry of American military flights with deported Colombians. It was planned that today two flights arrived with at least 160 people. The Secretary of State has responded hours later with the suspension for an indeterminate time the work of the visa section of its embassy in Bogotá and with the promise of more reprisals in the next few days.
The hardening of immigration policy was one of the axes of the campaign of the reelected US president and one of the issues that concentrated the flood of executive orders that have marked their first days in the White House. Colombia is one of the main origins of migrants to the United States, and Petro has demanded a “dignified treatment” to those who are sent back to the country. Specifically, he disavowed the flights that flew with dozens of Colombians in this morning.
A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves.
That is why I made the US military planes return that came with Colombian migrants.
I can’t make migrants in a country that does not want them; But if that country … https://t.co/u1mmwrnio1
– Gustavo Petro (@Petrogustavo) January 26, 2025
In response, the Secretary of State at the head of Marco Rubio announced on the morning of this Sunday that it will temporarily suspend the procedure and issuance of visas in Bogotá, a measure that affects thousands of Colombians. Petro, in turn, responded by remembering that there are 15,560 irregularly established in Colombia and demanding that they appear at local authorities. Although he did not announce consequences in cases that they do not, a migratory shock was sitting whose consequences are still unpredictable.
Petro’s refusal is produced in the midst of the controversy in several Latin American countries due to the announcement of this hardening of migratory measures. The Brazil Government denounced on Saturday the use of wives by US authorities against citizens of the country during a deportation flight and was the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Ricardo Lewandowski, who ordered the Federal Police to ask the Agents The “immediate” withdrawal of the wives, as soon as the plane made a technical stop in the city of Manaus.
Likewise, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, promised this Friday that there will be a comprehensive strategy to guarantee employment and social programs for repatriated people. “We have been preparing to receive Mexicans who have a space on the border and elsewhere so that they can access social programs, employment, to be able to move in our national territory to go to their places of origin ”, Said the president during her morning conference. Mexicans are about half of the 11 million undocumented in the United States and their remittances represent almost 4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Mexico, which in 2024 would have received an estimate of 65,000 million dollars.
A little over a year ago, during the mandate of Joe Biden, Colombia and the United States had signed a new protocol for the return of repatriated or deported nationals that accelerated the process and expanded the frequency of flights to an average that, for several months , it was around the four planes per month. This agreement was hit with the promise of expelling all irregular immigrants from Trump’s country.
Information in development, it will be expanded
(Tagstotranslate) Colombia
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