As countries push back on deportations, Trump trades words, threats

Posted by author January 26, 2025 Travel

Latin American leaders are grappling with how to respond to President Donald Trump’s unilateral demands after he enlisted the military to fly deportees home over the weekend.

The U.S. military has a checkered history of intervention in Latin America, and Mexico – which has routinely accepted U.S. charter deportation flights – but appeared to draw a line on the use of a military aircraft.

Colombia and Brazil also condemned the conditions in which deportees were returned, including the use of handcuffs, a practice the agency has used in prior administrations. Colombia suspended deportation flights on Sunday.

Last week, Mexico refused to accept a deportation flight for the first time in decades. The country refused an Airforce C-17 deportation flight on Thursday, a move first reported by NBC News.

Two other Airforce C-17 flights on Friday appeared to take a substantial detour around Mexican airspace to reach Guatemala, said Tom Cartwright, who tracks U.S. deportation flights as a volunteer for immigrant rights group Witness at the Border. The flights – appearing to depart Tucson, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas – veered over the newly renamed “Gulf of America,” flying south across Costa Rica, only to double back north to Guatemala, he said.

Trump announced retaliatory measures against Colombia on Sunday, tacking “emergency 25% tariffs” on all goods coming from Colombia. He also said Colombian officials, “allies and supporters” would see their visas revoked and travel to the U.S. banned.

U.S. goods and services trade with Colombia totaled an estimated $53.5 billion in 2022, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Of that, about $18.5 billion were Colombian goods exported to the United States.

In a statement posted to the Truth Social media site he owns, Trump said, “These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!”

The back-and-forth continued Sunday afternoon, with Petro saying he would offer his presidential plane to ensure the “dignified” return of Colombian deportees.

Pushing back

Following the NBC report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on the social media site X that Mexico had accepted four other deportation flights Thursday.

“This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans, & reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico,” Leavitt said on X.

There were three flights Thursday to Mexico, Cartwright said. All were the customary U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement charters, according to Cartwright.

On Sunday, Colombia President Gustavo Petro suspended U.S. deportation flights, saying the Trump administration must first establish a protocol to treat migrants with dignity before he’ll accept the flights.

“The United States cannot treat Colombian migrants like criminals,” Petro said in a post on the social media site X.

Brazilian officials also demanded that U.S. agents remove handcuffs from a group of deportees flown there Friday by standard ICE charter jet.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s foreign minister called the practice a sign of “blatant disrespect” for his fellow citizens, Reuters reported.

“It’s their way of taking a stand,” said Tony Payan, executive director of the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University. “Brazil and Colombia can do it more easily, as any tariff threats from Trump would not affect them that much. Mexico had to exercise a greater degree of caution.”

The United States cannot unilaterally send deportation flights to foreign countries; it has to establish an agreement with each nation.

Some countries have largely refused to accept deportation flights, China and Cuba among them. The U.S. is also unable to return immigrants to countries with which it has no diplomatic ties, including to Venezuela.

ICE has historically returned deportees in handcuffs and chains, a practice the agency say is to protect the safety of the crew, agents and migrants on board.

(This story has been updated to add new information.)