Trump’s trade war on Colombia after deportation flights blocked
One nation has given in to Donald Trump’s threat to implement a barrage of tariffs and sanctions in a row over deportation flights. Follow updates.
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Colombia has backed down and agreed to accept deported citizens sent on US military aircraft, hours after President Donald Trump threatened painful tariffs to punish the defiance to his mass deportation plans.
Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, had earlier said he would only take back citizens “with dignity,” such as on civilian planes, and had turned back two US military aircraft with repatriated Colombians.
Trump, less than a week back in office, responded furiously and threatened sanctions of 25 percent that would quickly scale up to 50 percent against Latin America’s fourth largest economy.
Petro initially sought to hit back and impose his own tariffs on US products, but by the end of the volatile Sunday (local time) he had backed down.
Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo told a late-night news conference that his country had “overcome the impasse” and would accept returned citizens.
A White House statement said that Colombia has agreed to “unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on US military aircraft, without limitation or delay.”
“Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,” it said.
“President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation’s sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”
Trump said he would suspend implementation of the tariffs.
It had been unclear even earlier how quickly Trump could impose tariffs on Colombia, historically one of Washington’s closest allies in Latin America, which enjoys a free-trade agreement with the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose wife is Colombian-American, suspended issuance of visas at the US embassy in Bogota and said visas would be revoked to Colombian government officials and their immediate family members.
The White House said the visa measures would stay in place until the first planeload of deportees returns.
Trump also vowed to subject Colombians to greater scrutiny at US airports.
Earlier, Trump vowed swift retaliation against Colombia after the country initially rejected two US planes carrying migrants home.
In a statement on his Truth Social account, Mr Trump said he planned to impose sanctions, including tariffs and visa restrictions, on the country for not taking the people back.
“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,” Mr Trump posted.
“This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people,” Mr Trump said.
The US President said Mr Petro’s move had “jeopardised the National Security and Public Safety of the United States.”
Mr Trump said he would immediately impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Colombian imports, and will raise them to 50 per cent in a week.
He also called for banking and financial sanctions against Colombia, and will apply a travel ban and revoke the visas of Colombian government officials.
During the pair’s battle of the wills, Mr Petro said he would not allow US migrant deportation flights access to his country’s airspace.
“The United States cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals. I forbid entry to our territory to US planes carrying Colombian migrants,” Mr Petro wrote on X, adding they would only be accepted once Washington had created a protocol ensuring the “dignified treatment” of the migrants.
Mr Petro added in a later post that he had “turned back US military planes that were coming with Colombian migrants,” without giving further details.
Brazil’s government similarly expressed outrage at the Trump administration over the treatment of dozens of Brazilians deported from the US.
The migrants were handcuffed on the flight in what Brazil called a “flagrant disregard” for their basic rights.
Mr Petro said he would allow in civilian US flights carrying deported migrants as long as they were not treated “like criminals.”
Last week, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo also vowed to send deportation planes back to the US and on Thursday, an Air Force C-17 plane carrying around 80 people chartered for Mexico, was blocked from taking off.
Nevertheless, Mexico is building tent camps and facilities at border cities to take migrants deported under the Trump administration.
IRAN AND US HAVE NOT HAD CONTACT
Iran and the United States have not exchanged any messages since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, a senior Iranian diplomat said Monday.
“It has only been a few days since the new American administration took office and no messages have been exchanged,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the local ISNA news agency.
During his first term, Trump pursued a policy of “maximum pressure”, withdrawing the United States from a landmark nuclear deal which imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
Tehran adhered to the deal until Washington’s withdrawal, but then began rolling back its commitments. Efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear pact have since faltered.
“We have to plan calmly and patiently. When the policies of the other side (Trump) are announced, we act accordingly,” said Takht-Ravanchi.
TEXAS TEACHER INVITES ICE TO ‘RAID’ SCHOOL
A substitute teacher in Fort Worth, Texas has been slammed for inviting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to raid the school he’s teaching at because his students “don’t even speak English.”
An investigation was launched by Fort Worth Independent School District officials after the substitute teacher, who has not been publicly identitifed, responded to a post by ICE on social media.
According to the Dallas Morning News, the teacher asked ICE agents to “come to Fort Worth, TX to Northside High School,” under the X username @Hookem232.
“I have many students who don’t even speak English and they are in 10th-11th grade,” the teacher’s post said.
“They have to communicate through their iPhone translator with me. The [U.S. Department of Education] should totally overhaul our school system in Texas too.”
TRUMP SAYS US WILL TAKE CONTROL OF GREENLAND
Donald Trump has said he believes the US will take control of Greenland, after details emerged of a fiery call between him and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Speaking onboard Air Force One, Mr Trump said: “I think we’re going to have it,” claming that the Arctic island’s 57,000 residents “want to be with us”.
“I do believe Greenland, we’ll get because it really has to do with freedom of the world,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the United States, other than we’re the one that can provide the freedom.”
His latest comments follow a “horrendous” phone call with Ms Frederiksen, during which Mr Trump was said to be aggressive when talking about Greenland.
Current and former senior European officials told the Financial Times that the call “was horrendous”.
“It was a cold shower,” one source told the paper. “Before, it was hard to take seriously, but I do think it is serious and potentially very dangerous.”
‘CONSEQUENCES’: TRUMP BORDER TSAR DEFENDS CHURCH, SCHOOL RAIDS
Donald Trump’s border tsar has defended raiding churches and schools as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration, while acknowledging that deporting all undocumented people in the US was not “realistic.”
Mr Trump began his second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling US immigration.
His administration quickly moved to ramp up deportations, including by relaxing rules governing enforcement actions at “sensitive” locations such as schools, churches and workplaces.
Asked about the rule change, Tom Homan, a former head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tapped to oversee Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda, said it sends a clear message.
“There’s consequences of entering the country illegally. If we don’t show there’s consequences, you’re never going to fix the border problem,” he told ABC News.
Such actions would nonetheless be made on a “case by case” basis, he said, noting that “many” members of gangs such as MS-13 are teenagers.
If there’s a “national security threat or a public safety threat that’s in one of these facilities, then it should be an option,” he said.
Catholic leaders have blasted the rule change, saying in a joint statement that “turning places of care, healing and solace into places of fear and uncertainty for those in need … will not make our communities safer.”
But US Vice President JD Vance told CBS he thought the only reason Catholic organisations were objecting is because they receive US$100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants and don’t want to lose the funding.
ICE said in posts on X that it had made almost 900 arrests in the past few days.
In 2024, agency data shows ICE made around 310 arrests per day.
Homan called on Congress to pass additional funding for dealing with those arrested.
“We’re gonna need more ICE beds, a minimum of 100,000. Congress needs to come to the table quick and give us the money we need to secure that border,” he told ABC News.
“We’re going to try to be efficient. But with more money we have, the more we can accomplish.”
TRUMP THREATENS TO ARM TAX AGENTS, SEND TO US BORDER
Donald Trump has said he could arm 88,000 Internal Revenue Service agents and send them to guard the US southern border.
The moved came days after the US President slapped an indefinite hiring freeze on the IRS.
Speaking at a rally at the Las Vegas’ Circa Resort and Casino, Mr Trump told supporters he could also fire the 88,000 workers, many of whom had salaries funded by $72 billion provided for the federal agency under the Inflation Reduction Act, The New York Post reported.
“They hired, or tried to hire, 88,000 workers to go after you and we’re in the process of developing a plan to either terminate all of them, or maybe we’ll move them to the border,” Mr Trump told the rally.
“I think we’re going to move them to the border where they are allowed to carry guns. You know, they’re so strong on guns. But these people are allowed to carry guns. So we will probably move them to the border.”
Mr Trump’s mass-deportation offensive earlier expanded into Los Angeles, with pre-dawn roundups in a massive operation expected to run daily.
Immigration agents avoided the parts of the city devastated by the wildfires, sources told The New York Post.
The effort was part of the major crackdown in large cities across the US after Mr Trump vowed to focus on the deportation of criminal migrants.
At the US-Mexico border, dramatic footage showed US Marine Corps arriving after the US Defence Department said it would send 1500 troops.
“Just as he promised, President Trump is sending a strong message to the world: those who enter the United States illegally will face serious consequences,” one White House official told ABC News.
As the raids were under way, Mr Trump was speaking at the Las Vegas rally, where he also spoke of the possibility of the US rejoining the World Health Organisation, just days after signing an executive order withdrawing from the international group.
“Maybe we would consider doing it again, I don’t know, they have to clean it up a bit,” he said.
The US President has long criticised the WHO for what he calls a “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms”.
Mr Trump told the crowd in Las Vegas he was unhappy that the US paid more into the WHO than China, which has a much bigger population.
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Originally published as Trump’s trade war on Colombia after deportation flights blocked