U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would impose sweeping retaliatory measures on Colombia, including tariffs, sanctions and travel bans, after the South American country turned away two U.S. military aircraft with migrants being deported as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Colombia, the third-largest trading partner of the U.S. in Latin America, swiftly responded, threatening a 50 per cent tariff on U.S. goods. The country’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, later posted on X that he directed his trade minister to increase tariffs on U.S. imports by 25 per cent.

Colombia is the second Latin American nation to refuse U.S. military deportation flights. Trump’s punitive action demonstrated his more muscular U.S. foreign policy and his renewed willingness to force countries to bend to his will.

Trump wrote on the social media site Truth Social that Petro’s refusal to accept the flights jeopardized U.S. national security.

The retaliatory measures include: imposing emergency 25 per cent tariffs on all goods coming into the U.S., which will rise to 50 per cent in one week; a travel ban and visa revocations on Colombian government officials and its allies; and fully imposing emergency treasury, banking and financial sanctions.

Trump said he would also direct enhanced border inspections of Colombian nationals and cargo.

“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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!”

Additionally, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. will suspend visa processing at its embassy in the Colombian capital, Bogota.

The U.S. will “no longer be lied to nor taken advantage of,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, adding that Petro had authorized the flights and provided all needed authorizations but then cancelled his authorization when the planes were in the air.

‘U.S. cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals’

The U.S. president declared illegal immigration a national emergency and imposed a sweeping crackdown since taking office on Monday, directing the U.S. military to help with border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum and taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on U.S. soil.

Colombia’s Petro condemned the U.S. practice of repatriation using military aircraft, suggesting it treated migrants like criminals. In a post on social media platform X, he said Colombia would welcome home deported migrants on civilian planes.

“The U.S. cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals,” he wrote.

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Petro said even though there were 15,660 Americans without legal immigration status in Colombia, he would never carry out a raid to return handcuffed Americans to the U.S.

“We are the opposite of the Nazis,” he wrote.

Mexico also refused a request last week to let a U.S. military aircraft land with migrants.

Trump did not take similar action against Mexico, its largest trading partner, but has said he was thinking about imposing 25 per cent duties on imports from Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1 over illegal immigrants and fentanyl crossing into the U.S.

The U.S. is Colombia’s largest trading partner, largely due to a 2006 free-trade agreement, with $33.8 billion US worth of two-way trade in 2023 and a rare $1.6 billion US trade surplus, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The biggest U.S. imports from Colombia that year were crude oil, gold, coffee and cut roses.

‘Degrading treatment’

Petro’s comments add to the growing chorus of discontent in Latin America as Trump’s week-old administration starts mobilizing for mass deportations.

Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Ministry late on Saturday condemned “degrading treatment” of Brazilians after migrants were handcuffed on a commercial deportation flight. Upon arrival, some of the passengers also reported mistreatment during the flight, according to local news reports.

The plane, which was carrying 88 Brazilian passengers, 16 U.S. security agents and eight crew members, had been originally scheduled to arrive in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

However, at an unscheduled stop due to technical problems in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, Brazilian officials ordered the removal of the handcuffs, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva designated a Brazilian Air Force flight to complete their journey, the government said in a statement on Saturday.

The commercial charter flight was the second this year from the U.S. carrying undocumented migrants deported back to Brazil and the first since Trump’s inauguration, according to Brazil’s federal police.

Officials from the U.S. State Department, Pentagon, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

The use of U.S. military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon’s response to Trump’s national emergency declaration on immigration issued on Monday.

In the past, U.S. military aircraft have been used to relocate individuals from one country to another, such as during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

U.S. military aircraft carried out two similar flights, each with about 80 migrants, to Guatemala on Friday.