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The Vice President and Foreign Minister of Colombia, Marta Lucía Ramírez, denied Tuesday that the government reached an agreement with the United States to deport Venezuelans chartered by the United States to Colombian territory.
Ramírez referred to the information saying that Colombia and the United States signed an agreement to return Venezuelans who had tried to enter the country illegally.
In this sense, the Vice President assured that these are statements “are not true” because “Colombia has not signed any agreement with the United States to bring back 6,000 deported Venezuelans,” she explained in an interview with Blu Radio.
“The United States has raised the possibility that some Venezuelans, who have arrived with Colombians in an irregular manner to the country, will be deported,” she said, insisting, however, that there is no agreement.
Bogotá has informed Washington that “if they are Colombians”, they can be deported, but in the case of Venezuelan citizens who were already under the Temporary Protected Status, will be analyzed “case by case”.
“If they are under the Protected Status, but do not want to live in Colombia anymore, it does not make sense to deport them because we cannot force them to live in our country”, the Vice President pointed out.
Ramírez confirmed that a group of Colombians, including two Venezuelans, were deported last week, although their cases are being studied individually to assess the situation.
CNN published an article on Monday in which it quoted two unidentified U.S. government officials as saying that the executive office headed by Joe Biden is sending Venezuelan nationals seeking asylum in the U.S., who at some point resided in that country, to Colombia.
As reported by CNN, the Biden administration would have undertaken this policy due to the impossibility of returning the migrants to Venezuela.
