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The United States has announced plans to revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he urged American soldiers to defy President Donald Trump during a rally in New York.
The State Department condemned Petro’s remarks, made at a pro-Palestinian street protest on Friday, as “reckless and incendiary.”
The Colombian president was in the US for the UN General Assembly, where earlier in the week he had called for a criminal investigation into Trump’s airstrikes on boats accused of drug trafficking in the Caribbean. Colombian media reported that he was already en route back to Bogotá when news of the visa cancellation broke.
Petro posted a video on social media showing him addressing a large crowd through a megaphone in Spanish. He called for the creation of a “world salvation army, whose first task is to liberate Palestine.”
“That is why, from here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the United States Army not to point their rifles at humanity,” he declared. “Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!”
He continued: “As happened in the First World War, I want the young people, sons and daughters of workers and farmers, of both Israel and the United States, to point their rifles not toward humanity, but toward the tyrants and toward the fascists.”
In response, the State Department accused Petro of having “urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” adding in a social media post that his visa was being revoked “due to his reckless and incendiary actions.”
Colombia’s Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, criticised Washington’s move, arguing that it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa that should have been cancelled. “But since the empire protects him, it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face,” Benedetti wrote on X.
Tensions between Petro—Colombia’s first left-wing president—and the Trump administration have deepened in recent months. At the UN, Petro fiercely criticised US airstrikes on suspected drug boats, claiming they were less about halting the narcotics trade than about maintaining “violence to dominate Colombia and Latin America.” He suggested Colombians may have been among the victims, accused US officials of colluding with drug gangs, and contrasted that with his own government’s efforts to persuade farmers to abandon coca cultivation.
According to the BBC, Petro branded the strikes an “act of tyranny.” Washington, however, insists the operations form part of its anti-drug campaign off Venezuela’s coast, accusing Caracas of running a cartel.
The US also denied visas to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and 80 Palestinian officials, preventing them from attending the UN General Assembly, despite the long-standing practice of allowing world leaders access to the organisation’s headquarters regardless of political disputes with Washington.
