Colombia agrees to take deported migrants after tariff showdown with Trump
Trump will maintain visa restrictions on Colombian officials, White House statement says
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 per cent tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods, which would be raised to 50 per cent 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 per cent 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 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."
In a statement late on Sunday, Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said: "We have overcome the impasse with the U.S. government."
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.
'U.S. cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals'
The U.S. president declared illegal immigration a national emergency and imposed a sweeping crackdown since taking office on Monday, directing the U.S. military to help with border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum and taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on U.S. soil.
Colombia's Petro condemned the U.S. practice of repatriation using military aircraft, suggesting it treated migrants like criminals. In a post on social media platform X, he said Colombia would welcome home deported migrants on civilian planes.
"The U.S. cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals," he wrote.
Petro said even though there were 15,660 Americans without legal immigration status in Colombia, he would never carry out a raid to return handcuffed Americans to the U.S.
"We are the opposite of the Nazis," he wrote.
Mexico also refused a request last week to let a U.S. military aircraft land with migrants.
Trump did not take similar action against Mexico, its largest trading partner, but has said he was thinking about imposing 25 per cent duties on imports from Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1 over illegal immigrants and fentanyl crossing into the U.S.
The U.S. is Colombia's largest trading partner, largely due to a 2006 free-trade agreement, with $33.8 billion US worth of two-way trade in 2023 and a rare $1.6 billion US trade surplus, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The biggest U.S. imports from Colombia that year were crude oil, gold, coffee and cut roses.
'Degrading treatment'
Petro's comments add to the growing chorus of discontent in Latin America as Trump's week-old administration starts mobilizing for mass deportations.
Brazil's Foreign Affairs Ministry late on Saturday condemned "degrading treatment" of Brazilians after migrants were handcuffed on a commercial deportation flight. Upon arrival, some of the passengers also reported mistreatment during the flight, according to local news reports.
The plane, which was carrying 88 Brazilian passengers, 16 U.S. security agents and eight crew members, had been originally scheduled to arrive in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
However, at an unscheduled stop due to technical problems in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, Brazilian officials ordered the removal of the handcuffs, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva designated a Brazilian Air Force flight to complete their journey, the government said in a statement on Saturday.
The commercial charter flight was the second this year from the U.S. carrying undocumented migrants deported back to Brazil and the first since Trump's inauguration, according to Brazil's federal police.
Officials from the U.S. State Department, Pentagon, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
The use of U.S. military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon's response to Trump's national emergency declaration on immigration issued on Monday.
In the past, U.S. military aircraft have been used to relocate individuals from one country to another, such as during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
U.S. military aircraft carried out two similar flights, each with about 80 migrants, to Guatemala on Friday.
With files from Reuters