Colombia won’t settle for deportation flights from the USA till the Trump administration supplies a course of to deal with Colombian migrants with “dignity and respect,” the nation’s president, Gustavo Petro, said on Sunday in a sequence of posts on X.
Mr. Petro additionally mentioned that Colombia had already turned away navy planes carrying Colombian deportees. Whereas different nations in Latin America have raised issues about President Trump’s sweeping deportation plans, Colombia seems to be the primary to explicitly refuse to cooperate.
“I can not make migrants keep in a rustic that doesn’t need them,” Mr. Petro wrote, “but when that nation sends them again, it needs to be with dignity and respect for them and for our nation.”
Mr. Petro’s stance is more likely to put him on a collision course with Mr. Trump, who since taking workplace final Monday has issued a sequence of govt orders and made different strikes geared toward laying the groundwork to attempt to deport an unlimited variety of migrants.
The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Amongst different issues, Mr. Petro mentioned he could be keen to permit civilian planes carrying deportees to land in Colombia, however not navy plane. “A migrant is just not a legal,” he wrote on X.
He didn’t embrace particulars about when or what number of navy planes and migrants had been turned away.
There have been 190,000 unauthorized Colombian immigrants dwelling within the U.S. in 2022, based on the newest information obtainable from the Pew Research Center.
It’s not clear if Colombia can legally flip away its personal residents, or if or what number of deportation flights it has acquired prior to now. A consultant for the president confirmed that the planes had been turned away, however didn’t instantly reply to different questions.
The announcement comes as nations around the world are grappling with the right way to put together for the mass deportations of unlawful immigrants that Mr. Trump has threatened.
Officers in Mexico, the supply of the most important variety of unauthorized immigrants in the USA, have mentioned they remained open to receiving deported residents and routine deportations have taken place to Mexican cities alongside the U.S. border in current days.
“On the subject of repatriations, we’ll all the time welcome Mexican women and men again to our territory with open arms,” Mexico’s international affairs ministry mentioned in a statement on social media on Friday evening.
Nonetheless, Mexican authorities haven’t disclosed whether or not they plan to just accept deported migrants from different nations, as Mexico has generally completed prior to now.
Different nations are crafting their very own responses to Mr. Trump’s push for extra deportations. Honduras, as an example, warned that expelling migrants may push the nation nearer to China’s political orbit.
Brazil’s international ministry complained of “degrading treatment” of its residents after 88 migrants arrived within the nation handcuffed on Friday.
Alternatively, Guatemala, Central America’s largest supply of unauthorized migrants, seems to be one of many first nations to succeed in an settlement with the USA to obtain deported residents transported on U.S. military planes.
About 4 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico dwell in the USA, representing about 37 p.c of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the USA, according to the Pew Analysis Middle.
However whereas Mexico continues to be the most typical nation of start for unauthorized immigrants in the USA, that quantity is down from a peak of 6.9 million 2007.
Alternatively, the unauthorized immigrant inhabitants from different nations has grown in recent times, particularly from the Caribbean, South America and Asia.