Deportation flights from the U.S. to Colombia resume after a diplomatic spat

Deportation flights between the U.S. and Colombia resume after diplomatic drama, migrants describe being shackled on U.S. flights.

Colombian migrants returning home on Tuesday (January 28, 2025) on Colombian military flights described being shackled during earlier U.S. flights that were blocked by their country’s leader in a dispute with President Donald Trump that nearly sparked a trade war.

Deportation flights between the U.S. and Colombia resumed Tuesday after the diplomatic drama over the weekend that provided clues as to how the Trump administration would deal with countries blocking large-scale plans to return migrants who entered illegally.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro initially refused to accept two U.S. military planes with migrants, prompting Mr. Trump to threaten 25% tariffs on Colombian exports and other sanctions. Colombia then relented and said it would accept the migrants, but fly them on Colombian military flights that Mr. Petro said would guarantee them dignity.

Two Colombian air force planes landed Tuesday in Bogota with more than 200 of the migrants, many of them women and children. Mr. Petro welcomed them with a post on X, saying they are now “free” and “in a country that loves them.”

Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said none of the 200 Colombians who were returned on Tuesday had criminal records in the U.S. or Colombia.

“Migrants are not criminals,” Mr. Petro wrote. “They are human beings who want to work and get ahead in life.”

One of the migrants, José Montaña of Medellín, said they were put in chains on the earlier U.S. flights. “We were shackled from our feet, our ankles to our hips, like criminals,” Montaña said. “There were women whose kids had to see their moms shackled like they were drug traffickers.”