Deportation flights from the U.S. to Colombia resume after a diplomatic spat

Handout picture released by Colombian Foreign Affairs Ministry press office, shows Migrants descending from a Colombian Air Force plane after being deported from the US in Bogota on January 28, 2025. Two Colombian military planes with some 200 nationals expelled from the US arrived in Bogota after a blazing row with Donald Trump over migrant deportations, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Colombian migrants returning home on Tuesday (January 28, 2025) on Colombian military flights described being shackled during earlier U.S. flights that were blocked by their country’s leader in a dispute with President Donald Trump that nearly sparked a trade war.

Deportation flights between the U.S. and Colombia resumed Tuesday after the diplomatic drama over the weekend that provided clues as to how the Trump administration would deal with countries blocking large-scale plans to return migrants who entered illegally.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro initially refused to accept two U.S. military planes with migrants, prompting Mr. Trump to threaten 25% tariffs on Colombian exports and other sanctions. Colombia then relented and said it would accept the migrants, but fly them on Colombian military flights that Mr. Petro said would guarantee them dignity.

Two Colombian air force planes landed Tuesday in Bogota with more than 200 of the migrants, many of them women and children. Mr. Petro welcomed them with a post on X, saying they are now “free” and “in a country that loves them.”

Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said none of the 200 Colombians who were returned on Tuesday had criminal records in the U.S. or Colombia.

“Migrants are not criminals,” Mr. Petro wrote. “They are human beings who want to work and get ahead in life.”

One of the migrants, José Montaña of Medellín, said they were put in chains on the earlier U.S. flights. “We were shackled from our feet, our ankles to our hips, like criminals,” Montaña said. “There were women whose kids had to see their moms shackled like they were drug traffickers.”

Some of the migrants told journalists they had been in the United States for less than two weeks, spending most of their time in detention centers.

“We went for the American dream, and we ended up living the American nightmare” said Carlos Gómez, a migrant from the city of Barranquilla who left Colombia two weeks ago, flew to Mexico, and crossed the border illegally into California, with the help of smugglers.

On Monday evening, Mr. Trump recounted the conflict with Mr. Petro and maintained that migrants should be restrained when flying back home, arguing it is for security reasons.

“We were being scolded because we had them in shackles in an airplane and he said ‘this is no way to treat people,’” he said at a policy conference for House Republicans held at his Doral golf club in Florida. “You’ve got to understand, these are murderers, drug lords, gang members, just the toughest people you’ve ever met or seen.” Colombian officials have challenged that claim and said the migrants deported did not have criminal records.

The Trump administration has said that it would prioritize the expulsion of migrants with criminal records in the initial phases of his promised mass deportation. But it has expanded arrest priorities to anyone in the country illegally, not just people with criminal convictions, public safety or national security threats and migrants stopped at the border.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that violent offenders “should be the priority of ICE,” or the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“But that doesn’t mean that the other illegal criminals who enter our nation’s borders are off the table,” Leavitt said.

A deal between both countries was made on Sunday night to resume the removal flights, with the White House saying in a statement that Colombia had “agreed to all of President Trump’s terms,” including the arrival of deportees on military flights.

Colombia sent two planes from its air force to El Paso, Texas and San Diego on Monday to pick up the migrants whose deportation had been delayed over the weekend, as well as dozens of others who had deportations pending. In total, 201 migrants were transported to Bogota on Tuesday, according to Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The group included 21 minors and two pregnant women.

Last year, Colombia received more than 120 deportation flights, but those were charter flights operated by U.S. government contractors.

Wolfram Díaz, a migrant from Bucaramanga, Colombia who had been in the U.S. for less than two weeks, said U.S. officials had them board a C-130 Hercules shackled.

“It was on its way to Colombia, but I am not sure what happened. We were turned back,” he said, adding that they were kept with handcuffs up until the moment they were transferred to the custody of Colombian officials.

Gómez, the migrant who left Colombia two weeks ago, said that he turned himself in to U.S. Border Patrol agents and requested an asylum hearing. But he was held for seven days in detention centers before he was deported. He made the journey with his 17-year-old son.

“We only want a better future for our children,” Gómez said.