Two of President Donald Trump’s deportation flights to Colombia were packed full of innocent people, according to officials in the South American country.
On Sunday, Jan. 26, Trump threatened Colombia with crippling tariffs, sanctions, visa restrictions, travel bans, and border clampdowns after President Gustavo Petro denied entry to two U.S. military planes full of deportees. He requested that the process be carried out with “dignity and respect.” Trump only retracted his harsh threats after his South American counterpart backed down and agreed to accept the repatriation flights.
But now officials in the country have claimed that there were no criminals on board two flights that arrived on Colombian soil on Tuesday. “They are not criminals,” Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombia’s foreign minister, said on X. “Being a migrant is not a crime.”
The Washington Post reported that two pregnant women and 20 or more children were on board, but no “Illegal Criminals” that Trump had railed against. One man, who had crossed the border into the U.S. a week before, told a radio station in Colombia that American border agents shackled his hands and feet.
Another man, Daniel Oquendo, 33, said that when he crossed the border on Jan. 20, border agents gave him a curt greeting. He told CNN that one agent told him: “Do you know who the next president is? The fun is over for you here, the music has changed… you’ve got to go back.”
Colombia sent planes to collect 91 deportees from El Paso, Texas, and 110 people from San Diego, California, and flew them to the capital, Bogotá. There they were given medical care and food, and promised resettlement help by officials.
Andrei Barrientos, 36, was on the El Paso flight. He said he and his fellow countrymen were treated like “gangsters” by U.S. border agents. “We didn’t do anything wrong: I’m not a criminal. Yes, I crossed the border illegally, but I was doing that to help my family … and they treated me like I was a gangster,” he told CNN. Barrientos added that while in U.S. Customs and Border Protection centers, they were handcuffed and “pushed around as if we were in jail.”
While deportation flights to Colombia are a common occurrence, the style in which Trump carried them out—on U.S. military planes—did not sit well with the Colombian president.
“They are Colombians, they are free and dignified and they are in their homeland where they are loved. The migrant is not a criminal, he is a human being who wants to work and progress, to live life,” Petro wrote in a post on X, with photos of repatriated people descending from the Colombian planes onto home soil.
“Welcome to Colombia,” the Foreign Ministry wrote on its X account. “The National Government welcomes you with open arms, guaranteeing your dignity and respecting your rights.”
Sending migrants home was a key campaign promise from Trump. On Sunday alone, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said it had arrested 956 people, as well as a further 1,179 on Monday.
