President Donald Trump’s stepped-up program of mass deportation of migrants—now treated as “criminals,” handcuffed, shackled and chained at the waist and, for the first time, also sent in U.S. military planes—has so far created conflicts with the Presidents of four U.S. neighbors that wish to be friends of the United States, but not at the expense of their own sovereignty: Those being Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico.
The immediate U.S.-Colombian dispute was settled, at least temporarily, on Jan. 26 when Colombian President Gustavo Petro backed down from his refusal to allow two U.S. military planes carrying deportees to land, after the exchange of threats of wild tariffs and counter-tariffs. Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo and Bogotá’s Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Garcia Peña, will be in Washington for high-level meetings “in the coming days,” Colombia’s Office of the Presidency announced today.
On Jan. 23, Mexico had also refused to grant landing rights to a U.S. military plane scheduled to bring deportees. Trump administration officials spoke then of an “administrative” issue, emphasizing that Mexico had been receiving commercial flights of deportees without contest.