Hours ago, an American warplane departed from San Diego and another from Paso, Texas. Immigrants were deported to Colombia without regard to their health conditions, ages, or humanitarian status.
Trump carried out his threat and imposed sanctions by raising customs on Colombian goods from 25 percent to 50 percent
according to Colombia’s foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo.
Another flight from El Paso, Texas, carried 46 men, 45 women, and five children.
“Everyone is in good condition,” Murillo said in Spanish in a video statement Tuesday.
“They are not criminals,” he said. “This information has been verified and corroborated by competent authorities following the protocols established for deportation flights. … And this is done as established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and organizations such as the International Migration Organization, because being a migrant is not a crime.”
Law enforcement officers “handcuffed us and pushed us around as if we were in jail,” Daniel Oquendo told CNN. “I understand the military has some procedures, but there were children, families.”
On January 20, days before he was put on a plane after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Oquendo was told by a border agent that “the fun is over.”
“It was very confusing: Nobody told us anything,” he said. “They told us the flight to Bogota was going to be seven hours, but when we landed, it was 10 hours, and as soon as the back door for the plane opened, we could see an ambulance saying ‘Houston.’”
Colombia had initially refused to accept the military planes, with President Gustavo Petro arguing that his country wanted to secure the arrival of immigrants in “dignified conditions” using civilian aircraft.
“A migrant is not a criminal and should be treated with the dignity a human being deserves,” he said Sunday. “We will receive our nationals in civilian airplanes, without treating them as criminals. Colombia must be respected.”
Trump then threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Colombia for “all goods” going to the U.S. In a week, those tariffs will be raised to 50 percent, the president wrote in a furious screed on his Truth Social account.
He added that a travel ban and visa revocations will be imposed on Colombian government officials, as well as “all allies and supporters.”
Trump also said that “visa sanctions” would be against “all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.”
The president also promised that there would be “Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.”
The White House later said Colombia agreed the “unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay.”After taking office, Trump pledged to remove violent criminals from the country, and swiftly deployed the full force of the federal government to assist in his anti-immigration agenda, with the Department of Homeland Security reorganizing its focus on immigration enforcement.
“These are murderers,” Trump told reporters Friday.
“These are people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen.”
He said he was “taking them out first.”
Federal law enforcement agents have arrested thousands of immigrants within the last week, but it’s unclear how many violent offenders have been removed.
Just over half of those arrests were considered “criminal arrests,” according to law enforcement data first reported by NBC News. The rest of those arrested appear to be nonviolent offenders or people who have not committed any criminal offense other than entering the country without legal permission.
But the administration confirmed Tuesday that it was treating all immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission as “criminals.”
In her first White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt falsely labeled the thousands of people arrested for allegedly living in the country illegally as “criminals,” despite the offense being a civil one. Anyone arrested on those grounds is not convicted of a crime.
“I know the last administration didn’t see it that way, so it’s a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that’s exactly what they are,” she said.
The Trump administration has also instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to aggressively pursue immigration arrests – and for each field office to make at least 75 arrests a day, according to The Washington Post.
The directive amplifies fears from immigrant communities and advocacy groups that U.S. citizens and people who are living in the country legally will be collateral damage in the president’s campaign.
“We didn’t do anything wrong: I’m not a criminal,” Andrei Barrientos told CNN after getting off a Colombia-bound deportation flight. “Yes, I crossed the border illegally, but I was doing that to help my family … and they treated me like I was a gangster.”
