Trump announces immediate retaliation against Colombia after socialist president turns back US deportation flights
President Trump vowed to launch a trade war with Colombia and impose an “emergency 25% tariff” on Sunday after the South American country turned back two US military deportation flights.
“I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia,” Trump wrote Sunday.
“This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people,” he said, adding that Petro’s decision has “jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States.”
In response, Trump said he would enact the “emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States” — and claimed he’d raise it to 50% in a week.
He also called for a travel ban, visa revocations on Colombian government officials, visa sanctions on party members and government supporters, enhanced customs and border protection inspections of any Colombian national and banking and financial sanctions.
“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump said. “We will not allow the Colombian Government to viola
“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump said. “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!”
The angry post came after Petro blocked the jets’ arrival and said he wouldn’t accept any deportation flights until the Trump administration used civilian planes and created better protocols for how it treats deportees.
“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro said. “That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants.”
And though Colombian migrants can’t stay in a country that doesn’t want them, they must be returned “with dignity and respect for them and for our country,” he said.
“We will receive our fellow citizens on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals.”
Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, signaled later Sunday that he was willing to cut a deal. He offered the country’s presidential aircraft — a converted Boeing 737-700 to move deported migrants. This, he said, would guarantee them “dignified conditions.”
The US had a trade surplus with Colombia of about $3.5 billion in 2022 — however it does rely on the nation for its most famous legal export. About 27% of US coffee is imported from Colombia, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The United States sent 475 deportation flights to Colombia between 2020 and 2024, the fifth-highest behind Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data.
The nation accepted 124 of those flights last year alone.
Colombians have flooded the US-Mexican border over the last few years, in part because a visa regime lets them fly directly to Mexico instead of trekking through the treacherous Darien Gap, a remote swath of mountains and jungle that links Central and South America.
