The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, assured this Sunday that he will not allow any American plane carrying deported citizens to enter the country if the United States does not guarantee that they receive dignified treatment. “The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals. I disallow the entry of North American planes with Colombian migrants into our territory. The United States must establish a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them,” Petro said in a message on his X account.
The Colombian president assures that he had “returned the US military planes that came with Colombian migrants.” “A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” he insisted, adding: “I cannot make migrants stay in a country that does not want them, but if that country returns them “It must be with dignity and respect for them and for our country.” The president has also requested that these people be sent “on civilian planes, without treating them as criminals,” because “Colombia respects itself.”
The announcement comes amid controversy in several Latin American countries over deportations as part of US President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. The Government of Brazil denounced on Saturday the use of handcuffs by US authorities against citizens of that country during a deportation flight. The Brazilian Minister of Justice and Public Security, Ricardo Lewandowski, ordered the Federal Police to ask the US agents to “immediately” remove the handcuffs, as soon as the plane made a technical stop in the city of Manaus, according to a statement.
On Friday, the White House indicated that the deportations of migrants had “begun,” in reference to the Trump’s main campaign promise to carry out the largest mass expulsion operation of aliens in the history of the United States. On the same day, the first two deportation flights bound for Guatemala arrived in that country from Laredo, Texas.
Petro has questioned some of Trump’s decisions or policies, and last Tuesday he described as “dangerous” the comment that the tenant of the White House made about Latin America, a region about which the North American president said: “We don’t need them.”
“We must wait for the development of relations and politics on the planet, not only in the United States. But I would say that the announcement that we are alone and we do not care about Latin America, etc., is a dangerous announcement not only for the world, but for North American society itself,” Petro told journalists.
The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, also assured on Saturday that the United States “would not be what it is” without the Mexicans who go to work there, given the start of the immigration raids that began after Trump took office.
#Petro #rejects #entry #Colombia #planes #migrants #deported #receive #dignified #treatment
