Trump deported 200 Colombians. None were criminals, Colombian officials say.
Among the deportees who arrived back home Tuesday in Colombia were two pregnant women and more than 20 children.
“President
Donald Trumpthreatened to punish Colombia with tariffs, a travel ban and other sanctions to compel it to accept deportation flights carrying
“Illegal Criminals.” But Colombian officials said there were no criminals among the two planeloads of migrants the U.S. government sent over Tuesday.
…
“They are not criminals,” Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombia’s foreign minister, said in a video statement posted on X. “Being a migrant is not a crime.”
The
social media standoff between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Trump erupted over the weekend as the new U.S. administration attempted to launch the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. In the end, Trump dropped his trade threats after Colombia agreed to the flights.
… White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing Tuesday that the administration considers “all” immigrants who are in the United States illegally to be criminals.
“They illegally broke our nation’s laws and, therefore, they are criminals as far as this administration goes,” she said, calling the declaration a “big culture shift in our nation.
Deportation is a civil, not criminal, proceeding.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported last year that people with criminal histories accounted for only 8 percent of the immigrants it was tracking for possible removal.
… In interviews with local media in Bogotá, some who were sent back said they had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally and were quickly picked up and sent home.
Though recent border crossers have long been a priority for removal, including under the Biden administration, federal records
show most border crossers do not have criminal records.
… The White House has been posting orange-framed mug shots of people arrested in cities such as Houston, Baltimore and Seattle, sometimes without names, making it difficult to independently verify their criminal records. …”