Who Actually Caved After Colombia Rejected Those Deportation Flights? Petro? Trump? Definitely the Media.

Dictators gain and maintain power by convincing people that it’s hopeless to oppose them. The more hopeless people think it is, the more hopeless it becomes. Eventually, it can get pretty close to truly hopeless. 

We don’t have to rush the process by uncritically accepting the aspiring dictator’s version of what happened every time someone stood up to him.  

Trump’s dominance performance over the past ten days has featured warrantless searches and arrests of immigrants, who are then unnecessarily shackled, sometimes at both the hands and feet, for long flights on US military planes to their nations of origin. Deportees to Brazil said that they had also been denied water, prohibited from going to the bathroom, and assaulted and threatened by US agents during the flight.

While the Biden administration had been deporting migrants on chartered commercial flights, the military planes and degrading treatment are said to be new.

Following these reports, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia denied landing rights to two US military planes full of shackled Colombian nationals headed to Bogota. “The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals,” he posted on X (in Spanish). “I deny the entry of American planes carrying Colombian migrants into our territory. The United States must establish a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.”

Trump reacted by threatening 25 percent tariffs on imports from Colombia, to double within a week if Petro stood firm that long.

Petro responded in kind, announcing tariffs on imports from the United States.

Insults were exchanged on X while discussions took place offline, and then on Sunday night the White House announced Petro’s unconditional surrender to Trump:

The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay. 

The statement from Colombia, via its Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, said that they had "overcome the impasse with the U.S. government" and would “continue to receive Colombians who return as deportees, guaranteeing them decent conditions as citizens subject to rights.”

When, after a contest between A and B, A says it crushed B, and B doesn’t outright deny it, one might be tempted to just take A’s word for it, and that’s what much of the US media did. Some major sources resisted identifying a victor, Reuters and the Guardian among them, and the WashPo and AP at least put “White house says…” before the claim of Trump’s victory. But many of the major not-that-right-wing sources (to say nothing of Fox), just paraphrased the Trump administration’s announcement:

NYT headline and summary:

Colombia Agrees to Accept Deportation Flights After Trump Threatens Tariffs
The country’s leader, Gustavo Petro, backed down after a clash with President Trump, which started when Mr. Petro turned back U.S. military planes carrying deportees.

CNN headline: “Colombia backs down on accepting deportees on military planes after Trump’s tariffs threats” 

BBC headline: “Colombia yields on US deportation flights to avert trade war.”

A later NYT analysis on the confrontation said that Petro “folded.” 

But is this really what happened?

What actually came about in the deportation of these Colombian nationals is that they traveled neither in shackles nor in US military planes. Instead, they were treated like passengers on Colombia air force planes.

Recall that Petro’s demand was “a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants.” With that condition met, he was ready to accept repatriated Colombians, as Colombia had, of course, already been doing, before Trump took office. They are, after all, Colombian nationals.

We don’t know the details of the discussion or agreement, but on the surface, at least, it appears that Petro got everything he demanded, and that it was Trump, not Petro, who retreated.

Speculating a little further: If there was one concession to Trump, it may have been the face-saving condition that the Colombian statement would not expressly contradict the Trump administration’s claim to have beaten Petro into submission. A quotation deep in that CNN article linked to above supports this inference:

“You can’t go out there and publicly defy us in that way,” a Trump administration official told CNN. “We’re going to make sure the world knows they can’t get away with being nonserious and deceptive.”

On Colombian TV, however, the Colombian ambassador to the US described the resolution as “a win-win,” and since the arrival of the migrants in Bogota Petro has claimed credit, at least with his domestic, Spanish-speaking constituents.

It seems that what was most important to the Trump administration was how it looked to the public in the United States—and that much of our sloppy, credulous media obliged. 

Trump’s base—the core that supports him for what he really is—thrills to the cruelty and the domination. Stories of handcuffed migrants and the forced submission of those who object are their motivational literature.

Those of us, on the other hand, who hope to restore and improve the constitutional order, and to block some of Trump’s abuses in the meantime, need to know what’s working, both for strategy and morale. 

Last week, a small nation—economically dependent on the U.S.—stood up to Trump’s indecent treatment of its citizens. And it looks a lot like Trump, not that nation’s president, was the one who caved. We should have been told.

Best, 

David

P.S. Colombia says the people deported on these flights are not criminals.