Less than a month into his presidency, Abelardo de la Espriella has announced an effort to expel undocumented immigrants.Bogota, Colombia – Opposition politicians and migrant communities in Colombia have decried President Abelardo de la Espriella’s plan to launch a deportation campaign against foreign nationals living irregularly in the country.De la Espriella unveiled the crackdown during a security council meeting on Sunday, ordering police to begin operations as soon as this week.The policy is expected to primarily affect Venezuelans, by far the largest migrant population in Colombia.It marks a stark departure from measures under previous administrations, which largely sought to create legal immigration pathways for those fleeing hardship in neighbouring Venezuela.“I will not accept any illegal immigrants, wherever they come from,” said de la Espriella in a video shared on the social media platform X on Sunday evening. “They will have to leave and be deported. It is a political decision I am taking responsibility for.”The far-right president – who was inaugurated earlier this month – said his government will first target those “committing crimes” and then those whose “status has not been regularised”.While de la Espriella did not address any specific nationalities, some 95 percent of Colombia’s migrant population are Venezuelan, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental group.Approximately 2.8 million Venezuelans reside in Colombia, making it home to the largest Venezuelan migrant community in the world.While nearly 2 million have a Temporary Protection Permit (PPT) authorising them to live in the country, an estimated 500,000 lack permission to be in Colombia, according to migration authorities. Many of them were granted temporary permits that have since expired.De la Espriella, a political outsider, pledged to tackle illegal immigration during his presidential campaign, his first bid for elected office.The former lawyer has aligned himself with right-wing leaders such as US President Donald Trump, who initiated his own deportation campaign in the United States.De la Espriella’s declaration on Sunday triggered uproar among opposition leaders, including leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, who narrowly lost the presidency in a June run-off. He leads the Historic Pact, the largest party in Colombia’s Congress.“Today, de la Espriella has added xenophobia to all the authoritarian, despotic and discriminatory traits of his policies,” Cepeda wrote on X.Cepeda then accused de la Espriella of failing to protect Colombian deportees from the United States.“De la Espriella is bold enough to target migrants from Latin American countries in Colombia, yet cowardly when it comes to protecting our fellow migrants in the United States,” he said.Maria del Mar Pizarro, a Historic Pact congresswoman, also denounced de la Espriella’s plans in an interview with Al Jazeera. She questioned whether the deportation campaign was about security or discrimination.“Foreign nationals who commit crimes must be prosecuted,” she said. “But persecuting and deporting someone — simply because their immigration status is not in order — is populism, not security.”Given the porous nature of the roughly 2,200-kilometre (1,370-mile) land border between the two countries, Pizarro added that there is little to stop deported Venezuelans from returning to Colombia.“Without border control, legalisation and intelligence efforts against criminal gangs, the government pays for the deportation, and the problem returns,” she said.De la Espriella has announced that the deportation operation will begin with a pilot programme in the coastal city of Barranquilla, which is home to an estimated 182,000 Venezuelans.Members of the Venezuelan diaspora in the city, however, fear that the crackdown will feed into stereotypes about their community.“We must not confuse irregular immigration status with criminality. They are two completely different things,” said Juan Carlos Viloria Doria, the vice president of Venezuelans in Barranquilla, a migrant advocacy organisation.While he backed the need to prosecute those who commit crimes, he said the law should apply to everyone “independent of nationality”.Viloria also noted that many migrants could face political persecution if deported back to Venezuela.Experts at the United Nations and other human rights watchdogs have accused the Venezuelan government of “repressive” activities, including the arbitrary detention and torture of political dissidents.“We have people who left because they believed their lives, their freedom, or their safety were at risk,” Viloria explained. “Added to that are the economic, social and humanitarian conditions that Venezuela still faces.”Despite being home to the world’s largest petroleum reserves, Venezuela has suffered from a plummeting gross domestic product (GDP) and rampant hyperinflation in the past decade.
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