Colombian President Gustavo Petro portrayed himself as a humanitarian champion as he welcomed back illegal immigrants deported by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Petro, who on Sunday briefly threatened to ignite a trade war with the United States and turned away U.S. planes over the treatment of their deportees, is accepting the deported Colombian nationals with open arms.
“Our compatriots come from the United States free, dignified, without being handcuffed,” Petro wrote Tuesday morning on social media. “We structure a productive, associative and cheap credit plan for migrants. The migrant is not a criminal, he is a free human being.”
The Colombian president included photos of deportees arriving in the country via U.S.-sanctioned flights, defending them as simply human beings who sought a better life abroad.
“They are Colombians, they are free and dignified and they are in their homeland where they are loved,” the Colombian president continued in a separate post with pictures of arriving deportees. “The migrant is not a criminal, he is a human being who wants to work and progress, to live life.”
Petro entered a brief standoff with the Trump administration after turning away two repatriation flights on the grounds that passengers were not being treated with dignity and respect.
The move sparked an immediate response from Trump, who accused the “socialist president” of jeopardizing U.S. national security and public safety.
Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on all Colombian goods coming into the U.S., institute a travel ban on Colombian nationals, revoke Colombian government officials’ U.S. visas, and tighten sanctions on the South American nation.
“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump warned. “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!”
Such actions from Colombia’s most crucial trade partner would have proved immediately devastating to the nation’s economy, but Petro did not want to back down.
In a long, disgruntled social media post, the Colombian president accused the U.S. government of acting like “white slavers” and seeing his countrymen as an “inferior race.”
Petro promised to swing back at the Trump administration’s proposed economic punishments with his own tariffs and sanctions, but this plan did not seem to resonate with the rest of Colombian leadership.
By Sunday night, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that Colombia agreed to the “unrestricted acceptance” of illegal immigrants deported by the U.S. “without limitation or delay.”
The Colombian government released its own official statement, agreeing to the “dignified return” of the “compatriots … coming from deportation flights.”
Petro, in a gesture of goodwill for returning Colombian nationals, is offering the service of his presidential plane in repatriation efforts.
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The Colombian president is also facing political challenges at home, where his approval ratings sit at approximately 34%.
His tenure in office, which began in 2022, has been marked by multiple accusations of corruption and an inability to suppress armed gangs’ influence in various regions of the country.
