Latin American leaders are scrambling to react to President Donald Trump’s aggressive foreign policy after he successfully forced Colombian President Gustavo Petro to back down on resisting the deportation of Colombian illegal immigrants back to their home country.
After Petro’s short-lived feud with Trump, Latin American leaders are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss how they will deal with Trump’s aggressive foreign policy.
On Sunday, Trump put Petro on blast on Truth Social for denying repatriation flights landing spots in the South American nation. Trump quickly threatened Petro with “emergency 25% tariffs” (to go up to 50% the next week) and “retaliatory measures” for not complying with American deportation efforts.
By Sunday evening, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reported that Colombia had “agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States.”
But Leavitt added that the threatened tariffs and sanctions would be “held in reserve … unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement.”
The Colombian president even offered his presidential aircraft to help with deportation efforts.
The clash between Trump and Petro sent shock waves through Latin America.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro, at Petro’s request, on Sunday evening called for an emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a bloc of 33 countries, to be held on Thursday morning.
The emergency meeting, which Petro and other regional leaders will participate in, will deal with migration, the environment, and Latin American and Caribbean unity, per Castro’s announcement.
Prominent Honduran politician Salvador Nasralla, a former first vice president, sounded the alarm after the announcement of the emergency meeting, warning his countrymen that Trump, unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, would harshly retaliate against any resistance.
“Make no mistake … Trump is not Biden, the Honduran people may pay dearly for a visceral reaction from the leftists of CELAC,” wrote Nasralla on X.
Mexico, too, is trying to adjust to the new sheriff in town.
On Friday, Leavitt told The New York Post, “Yesterday, Mexico accepted a record four deportation flights in one day! This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans and reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico. Mexico has also mobilized 30,000 National Guard.”
In fact, Mexico’s repatriation plan for deported migrants will be almost as ambitious of an undertaking as the United States’ deportation plan, as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has signed a slew of her own executive orders in response to Trump’s.
Sheinbaum has instituted a new program, “México te abraza” (“Mexico embraces you”) to deal with the logistics of thousands of immigrants being repatriated to Mexico.
Her policies include creating 35,000 jobs for deported migrants and giving a 2,000-peso check (about $97) to each repatriated Mexican.
The Mexican president’s position remains unclear on whether she will cooperate with the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and she has criticized Trump’s recent designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups.
Just a week into Trump’s second term, the effects of his policies are being felt well beyond the United States’ borders. At Thursday’s CELAC meeting, the leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean will try to adjust to the new administration’s border and trade policies.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
