Colombia will not accept deportation flights from the United States until the Trump administration provides a process to treat Colombian migrants with “dignity and respect,” the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, said on Sunday in a series of posts on X.
Mr. Petro also said that Colombia had already turned away military planes carrying Colombian deportees. While other countries in Latin America have raised concerns about President Trump’s sweeping deportation plans, Colombia appears to be the first to explicitly refuse to cooperate.
“I cannot make migrants stay in a country that does not want them,” Mr. Petro wrote, “but if that country sends them back, it should be with dignity and respect for them and for our country.”
Mr. Petro’s stance is likely to put him on a collision course with Mr. Trump, who since taking office last Monday has issued a series of executive orders and made other moves aimed at laying the groundwork to try to deport an enormous number of migrants.
The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Among other things, Mr. Petro said he would be willing to allow civilian planes carrying deportees to land in Colombia, but not military aircraft. “A migrant is not a criminal,” he wrote on X.
He did not include details about when or how many military planes and migrants had been turned away.
There were 190,000 unauthorized Colombian immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022, according to the most recent data available from the Pew Research Center.
It is not clear if Colombia can legally turn away its own citizens, or if or how many deportation flights it has received in the past. A representative for the president confirmed that the planes had been turned away, but did not immediately respond to other questions.
The announcement comes as countries around the world are grappling with how to prepare for the mass deportations of illegal immigrants that Mr. Trump has threatened.
Officials in Mexico, the source of the largest number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, have said they remained open to receiving deported citizens and routine deportations have taken place to Mexican cities along the U.S. border in recent days.
“When it comes to repatriations, we will always welcome Mexican men and women back to our territory with open arms,” Mexico’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement on social media on Friday night.
Still, Mexican authorities have not disclosed whether they plan to accept deported migrants from other countries, as Mexico has sometimes done in the past.
Other countries are crafting their own responses to Mr. Trump’s push for more deportations. Honduras, for instance, warned that expelling migrants could push the country closer to China’s political orbit.
Brazil’s foreign ministry complained of “degrading treatment” of its citizens after 88 migrants arrived in the country handcuffed on Friday.
On the other hand, Guatemala, Central America’s largest source of unauthorized migrants, appears to be one of the first countries to reach an agreement with the United States to receive deported citizens transported on U.S. military planes.
About 4 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico live in the United States, representing about 37 percent of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
But while Mexico is still the most common country of birth for unauthorized immigrants in the United States, that number is down from a peak of 6.9 million 2007.
On the other hand, the unauthorized immigrant population from other countries has grown in recent years, especially from the Caribbean, South America and Asia.
