President Gustavo Petro says Bogota will block flights to the US until refugees are guaranteed 'respect'.
US President Donald Trump has vowed to impose tariffs and visa restrictions on Colombia after Bogota turned away two US military planes carrying migrants for violating Trump's executive order.
Washington will slap Colombia with a 25 percent “emergency fee” on all goods coming to the US, which will be raised 50 percent a week, Trump wrote on Truth Social, a social network he owns on Sunday.
He said his administration would implement “immediate travel bans and visa cancellations” and “visa sanctions” for government officials, as well as their family members and supporters.
The threat comes after Colombian President Gustavo Petro said his government would not allow planes to transport migrants to the United States until officials came up with a policy that treats them with “respect”.
Petro announced this in two X episodes, one of which featured a video of migrants allegedly deported to Brazil walking on tarmac with their hands and feet.
Petro said: “An immigrant is not a criminal and should be given the respect a human being deserves.
“That's why I turned back the US military planes that were carrying migrants to Colombia.”
Petro added that his country would receive Colombians “on civilian flights” and “without treatment as terrorists”.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump's border chief told ABC News that he believes countries that do not want to return their citizens will succumb to US pressure.
“Oh, they'll take them back,” Tom Homan.
If governments refuse, “then we will put them (migrants) in a safe third country”, Homan said, without specifying which countries would qualify as “safe”.
Threat of deportation
Trump's threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants has drawn him into conflict with governments in Latin America, the original home of nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US.
Under Trump's first administration in 2017-2021, Mexico agreed to take in Mexican immigrants deported from the US after Trump threatened to pay trade tariffs.
Under the leadership of US President Joe Biden in 2021-2025, however, Washington returned to expelling Mexican immigrants from their countries.
On Friday, two Air Force C-17 cargo planes carrying US migrants landed in Guatemala.
On the same day, Honduras received two evacuation planes carrying 193 people.
As part of a broader effort to make good on Trump's campaign promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants, his administration is also using active-duty military personnel to deport people.