Colombia to block US deportation flights amid growing LatAm pushback

BOGOTÁ: Colombia’s president vowed Sunday to block US deportation flights until migrants were guaranteed “dignified treatment,” escalating a row between Washington and left-wing Latin American governments over US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“The United States cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals. I forbid entry to our territory to US planes carrying Colombian migrants,” President Gustavo Petro wrote on X.

In a later post, he said he had “turned back US military planes,” without saying when or how many planes were involved. He added however that he would allow in civilian US flights carrying deported migrants, as long as they were not treated “like criminals.”

The president later said over 15,600 undocumented Americans were living in Colombia and urged them to “regularize their situation,” while ruling out raids to arrest and deport them.

US officials did not immediately respond to Petro’s remarks, but Trump’s border czar told ABC News he was convinced that countries reluctant to take back citizens would cave under US pressure.

“Oh, they’ll take them back,” Tom Homan said Sunday in a televised interview.

If governments refused, “then we’ll place them (migrants) in a third safe country,” he said, without specifying which countries would qualify as “safe.”

Under Trump’s first presidency, Mexico agreed to take in non-Mexican migrants deported from the United States after being threatened by Trump with punitive trade tariffs.

Under Biden, however, the United States reverted to deporting non-Mexican migrants directly to their countries.