Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right former lawyer who took office just over two weeks ago, has ordered joint operations between the national police and the migration authority to identify and deport foreigners without regular migration status. The directive, issued during a security council meeting held on Sunday in Barranquilla — the Caribbean port city that has effectively become an alternative seat of government — became widely known after a video of the session was leaked. "The order to Migration is clear: first those committing crimes, second those who have not regularised their status, who in due course will have to be deported," de la Espriella said. Echoing the rhetoric of his ally US President Donald Trump, he added: "First Colombians, second Colombians and third Colombians."

The announcement marks a dramatic break from a policy maintained for more than a decade by governments across the political spectrum. Colombia, which shares a 2,219-kilometre land border with Venezuela, took in roughly a third of the 7.8 million people who have fled Venezuela since 2015, becoming the world's leading host country for Venezuelan migrants. A Temporary Protection Statute introduced by decree in March 2021 gave irregular migrants access to a free temporary permit and was widely regarded as a model of humanitarian migration policy. The United Nations refugee agency estimated three million Venezuelans were living in Colombia in 2025. Although de la Espriella did not mention Venezuelans specifically, they account for roughly 90% of all migrants in the country, with estimates of those in an irregular situation ranging from around 500,000 to 848,000, including some 193,000 minors.

The measure has drawn swift criticism from opposition politicians and human rights advocates. Senator María José Pizarro Rodríguez compared the order to the operations of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and called it "pure xenophobia," while Congresswoman María Fernanda Carrascal described it as "an affront to human rights" unsupported by evidence. Researchers have also cautioned against conflating irregular status with criminality. "A person in irregular status is not a criminal," said Ronal Rodríguez of the Venezuela Observatory at the Universidad del Rosario. Analysts point out that under Colombian law there is no category of "illegal" immigrant — being undocumented is not a crime but rather an administrative irregularity. Academic Andrés Sampayo has estimated that the Venezuelan population contributes around three billion dollars annually to the Colombian economy through consumption, taxes and entrepreneurship.

Serious practical obstacles stand in the way of implementation. Sources within the migration authority reportedly believe the agency lacks sufficient personnel to carry out operations on the scale promised. Any mass deportation would also require cooperation from Venezuelan authorities, at a moment when Venezuela is undergoing a US-backed negotiated political transition under acting president Delcy Rodríguez. De la Espriella, who joins a regional trend of Trump-aligned leaders tightening migration rules alongside Argentina's Javier Milei and Chile's José Antonio Kast, made the immigration announcement in the same session in which he declared criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion to be "terrorists" — reflecting the iron-fist security platform that was the centrepiece of his election campaign. The announcement also comes as Colombia continues to recover from a 7.4-magnitude earthquake on 10 August that killed more than 300 people and destroyed over 30,000 homes.