Manuel Alejandro Núñez Ochoa. Migration Studies MA alumnus (University of Sussex) and former Associate Resettlement and Complementary Pathways Officer. 

The Colombian response to Venezuelan forced migration has undergone significant changes since the administration of Gustavo Petro took office in 2022. As the first left-wing president of Colombia, his views on immigration resemble the early 2000s discourses of leftist governments in the region, questioning the restrictive immigration policies of migrant recipient countries, especially those of the United States since the first Donald Trump administration. Petro does so by presenting his approach as bringing a human, ethical and moral response towards migration.  

Petro’s liberal migration discourse, based on the promotion of migrants’ rights, the non-criminalisation of migrants, anti-racism, and freedom of movement, supports his domestic electoral goals by connecting with his supporters. At the same time, it enables Petro to position himself as a credible left-wing leader in the region. However, there is a gap between his liberal rhetoric and the weak and restrictive response of his administration towards the Venezuelan forced migration in Colombia. 

 
The liberal discourse on migration of Gustavo Petro 
 
As Freire and Castillo have noted, a president’s agenda largely determines the migration policy in most South American countries. Since taking office, Gustavo Petro has been very vocal regarding the protection of Colombian migrants in Europe and the US; he has promoted a welcoming response to Palestinians since the war in Gaza intensified; and he has been critical of the US administration’s repressive measures against migrants.  

For instance, in a talk at the IV Foro Abierto de Ciencias de América Latina y el Caribe (CILAC) in December 2024, President Petro condemned King Charles III and the UK labour government for imposing visa restrictions on Colombians following a rise in asylum requests from Colombians, accusing them of reverting to a mindset reminiscent of enslavers and considering Colombians as “inferior”. Responding to the imposition of visa restrictions to Colombian citizens arriving to the UK, Petro threatened to implement visas for British citizens arriving in Colombia. In the same context, Petro also advocated for free global mobility, trying to engage with his constituents. 

Furthermore, the Colombian government has stated that it will host Palestinian refugee children injured in the conflict in Gaza to receive medical care in Colombia. This mirrors the initiatives taken by Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in 2015 to accept Syrian refugees. Since January 2025, after the US president Donald Trump ordered the deportations of undocumented migrants in the US, the Colombian president has demanded that migrants have to be treated with dignity and respect. He has advocated for the human rights of Latin American migrants and for the non-criminalisation of migrants in the US. In addition, the Colombian president has called for Central American and South American countries to demand the respect of human rights and the non-criminalisation of deported migrants from the US. Furthermore, he criticised the detention of migrants by the US administration in El Salvador, arguing migrants are not criminals, nor slaves, and that Latin America must respect their dignity. Moreover, in an X post published in February 2025, the Colombian president praised how the 190 undocumented Venezuelans who were deported from the US were not handcuffed on the flight and treated with dignity. 

Gustavo Petro has also criticised the criminalisation of Venezuelan migrants by the US government. The Colombian president expressed criticism towards the United States government for its allegations regarding Venezuelans being affiliated with a criminal gang.  Conversely, Petro condemned the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele accusing him of criminalising Venezuelan children and demanding the release of Colombians detained in El Salvador.  

The current Colombian administration’s response towards the Venezuelan migration 

President Petro’s use of liberal rhetoric on migration aims, first, to achieve popular support for his political reforms. Second, it seeks to position his government internationally. The relationship with the United States significantly shapes migration policy outcomes that align with the presidential ideology. Consequently, Petro’s administration can leverage its foreign policy strategy, particularly in its stance against the new U.S. president, Donald Trump, by employing liberal rhetoric toward migration. 

However, his domestic political agenda is driven by the promotion of a peace deal with the Colombian Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) guerrilla, which requires the support from the Venezuelan government. At the same time, his foreign policy  rejects the USA’ economic sanctions against Venezuela. Unlike his predecessors, Petro’s administration has taken a restrictive approach towards Venezuelan forced migration. This aims to facilitate achieving peace with the ELN guerrilla and to establish himself as a left-wing leader in the region. As a result, his response to Venezuelan migration is relatively timid, sometimes even aligning with Nicolás Maduro’s administration in Venezuela by downplaying the reality of forced migration from Venezuela. 

Since coming to office, Gustavo Petro has not extended the complementary protection for Venezuelans, known as the Temporary Protection Permit (PPT). Instead, he has implemented an ad hoc measure by creating a special two years, non-renewable visa (Visa V) to regularise Venezuelan migrants who entered the country undocumented before December 4^th, 2024. There are multiple obstacles to obtain a Visa V, however. The first relates to cost, as the visa application incurs a fee of around £26,45. Given that the average monthly income of a Venezuelan migrant in Colombia is approximately £65.60, migrants are effectively requested to allocate nearly 40% of their monthly income to cover the visa application fee. In border regions, where migrants encounter higher unemployment rates and greater job informality compared to larger cities like Bogotá, affording the visa fee becomes nearly impossible. Secondly, many visa applications have been rejected due to additional documents required by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Colombia during the applications – e.g. education documents apostille and a passport, the cost of which is prohibitive for many applicants (a Venezuelan passport application costs on average £126, plus a £90 fee charged at the consulate). At the same time, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Colombia   requests documents that are declined for issuance by the Colombian Migratory authority, the Special Administrative Unit of Colombian Migration. Finally, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Colombia has the discretionary power to deny the visa application if it considers the applicant to be a potential threat to the country.  

For those Venezuelans who entered Colombia after December 4^th, 2024, there are no regularisation options and Venezuelan nationals travelling to Colombia by air must comply with strict entry requirements established by the Colombian Migratory Authority.  Moreover, the other complementary protection measure issued by the Colombian government for Venezuelan migrants who are parents or legal guardians of Venezuelan children, of children who have obtained a Temporary Protection Permit before December 31, 2023, lacks the regulation of the law to be implemented. Furthermore, the Petro government has not managed to address the significant backlog of asylum requests and has still a low rate of refugee recognition. According to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Colombia, between 2017 and 2023, Colombia received more than 55,000 asylum applications, but only 1,475 requests were approved. Of the total requests approved, 1,357 applications were from Venezuelans.  

In contrast to the welcoming discourse promoted by the Gustavo Petro administration towards Palestinians, the current Colombian administration has refused to receive Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers who can be deported from the US. Moreover, the president claimed that he would run a program promoting the voluntary return of Venezuelans, which is in opposition to recommendations by the UNHCR and human rights organisations that highlight the risks of returning Venezuelans to their country of origins. Additionally, the Colombian Migratory Authority has arbitrarily denied more than 400 Temporary Protection Permits (Permiso por Proteccion Temporal, PPT) to Venezuelan residents without providing an opportunity for appeal. After the denial, Venezuelans are at risk of being deported and are not allowed to remain in the country for more than 30 days. In some cases, the Colombian Migratory Authority argues that having an administrative fine, e.g. a traffic fine, is a legitimate reason for denying a PPT.  

To further curb Venezuelan immigration in Colombia, the Petro administration has increased migration control operations – that Venezuelan refugee-led organisations have described as “raids” –  from 37,000 in 2021 to 218,000 in 2022, driven by public stigmatisation of Venezuelan migrants as criminals. These operations in Bogotá were conducted by the Colombian Migratory Authority, the National Police, and the Mayor’s Office, targeting Venezuelan migrants to verify their documents and criminal records and to enforce criminal law. However, according to testimonies from refugee-led organisations and from a Bogota Mayor’s office official, these operations did not follow due process. Many migrants who were detained and subjected to these checks were unable to access their human rights protections. Although these operations were overseen by the Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia and civic rights organisations to protect migrants’ rights, those organisations were not present in the actual operations. Furthermore, underage Venezuelan migrants were also detained during these operations. The Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF), the country’s child protection institution, was not informed or involved in the migration controls, despite legal requirements for their participation.  

Conclusions 

The president of Colombia Gustavo Petro has instrumentalised the political discourse of non-criminalisation of migrants to promote his domestic and foreign policy goals. He is aligning himself with his electorate using an anti-American, pro-migration and pro-Colombian rhetoric. At the same time, his pro-migration rhetoric enables him to develop his foreign policy agenda, opposing the US and establishing a left-leaning regional agenda in line with his political objectives. However, the Petro administration has increasingly adopted restrictive and in some case repressive measures towards Venezuelan migrants in the country, allowing the president to gain support and popularity domestically and pursuing his domestic policy agenda. Therefore, a gap between the political rhetoric and the practical responses towards Venezuelans has emerged as the goals and ideology of the Colombian president in his domestic and foreign policy goals drive the response to Venezuelan migrants in Colombia.