Trump imposes 25% tariffs on Colombia as deported migrant flights denied

The feud between the two nations comes as Trump’s administration has vowed to carry out “mass deportations”. The president signed multiple executive orders related to immigration on his first day in office.

Some of Trump’s executive orders were signed with the aim of expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to arrest and detain unlawful migrants on US soil.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that 538 arrests were conducted on Thursday alone.

For comparison, ICE detained more than 149,700 people in the 2024 fiscal year under the Biden administration, which equals an average of 409 a day.

Trump declared a national emergency at the Mexico border, ordered officials to deny the right to citizenship to the children of migrants in the US illegally or on temporary visas and re-implemented his “Remain in Mexico” policy from his first term.

On Saturday, US Vice President JD Vance told CBS’s Face the Nation that he supports “doing law enforcement against violent criminals”.

“Just because we were founded by immigrants doesn’t mean that 240 years later that we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

Tom Homan, Trump’s “border tsar” told ABC News on Sunday that the military is currently at the US-Mexico border helping with departure flights on military planes and building infrastructure to secure the border.

“It’s sending a strong signal to the world: Our border is closed,” he said.

Trump campaigned on securing the southern border and reducing the number of undocumented immigrants who enter the US.

Additional reporting by Ione Wells