Colombian President Gustavo Petro says migrants are not criminals and should be treated with “dignity”
US President Donald Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after its president barred two US military planes carrying deported migrants from landing in the country.
Trump said the emergency tariffs “on all goods” coming into the US from Colombia would be put in place “immediately”, and in one week the 25% tariffs would be raised to 50%.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro earlier on Sunday said he had denied entry on Colombian soil of US military planes carrying deported migrants.
Petro said he would “receive our fellow citizens on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals” and said migrants must be returned “with dignity and respect”.
US officials told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that two military planes from San Diego were due to land in Colombia on Sunday with migrant deportees, but those plans were scrapped due to complications.
In response, Trump announced “urgent and decisive retaliatory measures” in a post on TruthSocial. He said the US will impose a travel ban and “immediate visa revocations” on Colombian government officials, as well as its allies and supporters.
Trump also said there would be visa sanctions on supporters of the Colombian government, and enhanced Customs and Border Protection inspections “of all Colombian nationals and cargo on national security grounds”.
“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump added, saying his administration would 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”.
The US imports about 20% of its coffee – worth nearly $2bn – from Colombia, as well as other goods like bananas, crude oil, avocados and flowers.
Tariffs will make importing it more expensive which – if passed onto the consumer – could mean coffee prices rising.
The sanctions on the Colombian government and its supporters, and the breakdown in diplomatic relations that it signals, are very significant.
Trump’s own pick for deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has argued that “working with other countries to stop such migratory flows” must be a “global imperative of US foreign policy.”
Tens of thousands of migrants every year from around the world, from India to China, head north towards the US after landing in South America and travelling up through Colombia, usually facilitated by criminal gangs.
This move will no doubt make it harder for Trump’s administration to work with Colombia to stop this.
Also on Sunday, Petro said more than 15,666 Americans were in Colombia illegally – a figure the BBC has not been able to independently verify.
Petro said that unlike the Trump administration, he would “never” be seen carrying out a raid to return illegal US migrants.
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted this picture on X on 24 January announcing that deportation flights had begun
The feud between the two nations comes as Trump’s administration has vowed to carry out “mass deportations”. The president signed multiple executive orders related to immigration on his first day in office.
Some of Trump’s executive orders were signed with the aim of expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to arrest and detain unlawful migrants on US soil.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that 538 arrests were conducted on Thursday alone.
For comparison, ICE detained more than 149,700 people in the 2024 fiscal year under the Biden administration, which equals an average of 409 a day.
Trump declared a national emergency at the Mexico border, ordered officials to deny the right to citizenship to the children of migrants in the US illegally or on temporary visas and re-implemented his “Remain in Mexico” policy from his first term.
On Saturday, US Vice President JD Vance told CBS’s Face the Nation that he supports “doing law enforcement against violent criminals”.
“Just because we were founded by immigrants doesn’t mean that 240 years later that we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border tsar” told ABC News on Sunday that the military is currently at the US-Mexico border helping with departure flights on military planes and building infrastructure to secure the border.
“It’s sending a strong signal to the world: Our border is closed,” he said.
Trump campaigned on securing the southern border and reducing the number of undocumented immigrants who enter the US.
Additional reporting by Ione Wells
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