Colombian President Gustavo Petro vs President Trump

Deportation diplomacy: Bogota-Washington edition

President Trump threatened Colombia with tariffs and sanctions after the country’s leader briefly halted U.S. Air Force deportation flights over the weekend, demanding U.S. officials treat the deported migrants with dignity instead of transporting them in shackles and chains.

 Rewind: “A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” President Gustavo Petro wrote on social media Sunday morning. “That's why I turned back the US military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants,” he said. Trump responded with a 25 percent tariff threat on all Colombian imports, and promised to raise that to 50 percent after a week. Petro responded with his own retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on U.S. imports, and later wrote that those tariffs would rise to 50 percent.

 “You don’t like our freedom, fine,” Petro wrote online. “I do not shake hands with white enslavers,” he said, and added in his own warning, “Overthrow me, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.” However, just hours later, Petro had changed his tune publicly and agreed to accept the detained migrants.

 By the way: “Early on Friday, Guatemala received two U.S. Air Force jets carrying around 160 deportees in total, making it one of the first countries to publicly receive such flights,” the New York Times reports. 

  Colombia will now use its “presidential plane ready to facilitate the return of Colombians who were going to arrive in the country this morning on deportation flights,” Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said in a statement Sunday evening.

 So what changed? The deported Colombians will be sent in “decent conditions, as citizens subject to rights,” Murillo said. He also noted he will travel to the U.S. in the coming days for further talks with officials in Washington.

 The White House says Colombian officials agreed to “unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” according to its own statement Sunday evening. Reuters notes “The statement did not specifically say that the agreement included military flights, but it did not contradict the White House announcement.”

 Big-picture messaging: Trump’s Colombia’ threats are “a warning to US allies and adversaries alike,” the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher and Ione wells report. And that warning is “If you don't co-operate with the US, the consequences will be severe,” the two journalists explain.