President Gustavo Petro says Bogota will block US deportation flights till migrants are assured ‘dignified therapy’.
US President Donald Trump has ordered tariffs and visa restrictions on Colombia after Bogota turned away two US army plane transporting migrants being deported beneath Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Washington will slap Colombia with 25 p.c “emergency tariffs” on all items coming into the US, which might then be raised to 50 p.c in per week, Trump wrote on Reality Social, the social media platform that he owns on Sunday.
He added that his administration will impose a “journey ban and rapid visa revocations” and “visa sanctions” on authorities officers, in addition to their members of the family and supporters.
Trump wrote that Petro’s transfer “jeapordized the Nationwide Safety and Public Security of the US.”
The retaliatory measures come after Colombian President Gustavo Petro mentioned his authorities wouldn’t settle for flights carrying migrants deported from the US till its administration creates a protocol that treats them with “dignity”.
Petro made the announcement in two X posts, certainly one of which included a information video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil strolling on a tarmac with their palms and ft restrained.
“A migrant shouldn’t be a legal and should be handled with the dignity {that a} human being deserves,” Petro mentioned.
“That’s the reason I returned the US army planes that have been carrying Colombian migrants.”
Petro added that his nation would obtain Colombians in “civilian planes” and “with out therapy like criminals”.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump’s border czar instructed ABC Information he was satisfied that nations reluctant to take again residents would cave beneath US strain.
“Oh, they’ll take them again,” Tom Homan.
If governments refused, “then we’ll place them [migrants] in a 3rd secure nation”, Homan mentioned, with out specifying which nations would qualify as “secure”.
Risk of deportations
Trump’s threats to deport thousands and thousands of migrants with out papers have put him on a possible collision course with governments in Latin America, the unique house to most of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants within the US.
Below Trump’s first presidency in 2017-2021, Mexico agreed to soak up non-Mexican migrants deported from the US after being threatened by Trump with punitive commerce tariffs.
Below US President Joe Biden in 2021-2025, nonetheless, Washington reverted to deporting non-Mexican migrants on to their nations.
On Friday, two Air Drive C-17 cargo planes carrying migrants faraway from the US touched down in Guatemala.
On the identical day, Honduras obtained two deportation flights carrying a complete of 193 individuals.
As a part of a flurry of actions to make good on Trump’s marketing campaign guarantees to crack down on irregular immigration, his authorities can also be utilizing active-duty army to hold out deportations.
