Colombian immigrants in the US: Why their number is so high

In a statement, the White House said, “The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay.” The statement also said that the draft orders imposing tariffs and sanctions on Colombia would be “held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement.”

US-Colombia bilateral relations

Colombia has traditionally been an ally of the US in South America. However, bilateral relations have been strained since Gustavo Petro’s ascension in 2022 made him Colombia’s first leftist President in recent history. He has sought to distance the country from the US and has stated his interest in joining BRICS+, considered a prominent critic of Western hegemony.

The passage of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in 2012 made the US Colombia’s largest trading partner. Data from the FTA show that the US accounts for 34% of Colombia’s total trade, while Colombia is a top ten supplier of crude oil to the United States. Crude oil imports to the US amounted to $5.4 billion of the $16 billion in imports in 2023. The goods and services trade between the two countries amounted to an estimated $53.5 billion in 2022.

Controlling migration from Colombia

The Colombian diaspora in the US is its largest outside the country, with 1.6 million people of Colombian origin recorded in 2021. This includes around 855,000 immigrants – 2% of the country’s 45.3 million overall U.S. immigrants. Nearly one in four South American immigrants in the United States in 2021 was from Colombia.

US Census data showed that this group has grown nearly six times between 1980 and 2020, with most Colombian immigrants situated in Florida, New York and New Jersey. Immigrants were chiefly employed in management, business, science, and arts and service sectors.

According to the American think tank Migration Policy Institute, “Since 2018, the number of people leaving Colombia has steadily increased, driven in large part by the consequences of the country’s prolonged armed conflict and economic challenges…” Colombia has been wracked by violence since the 1960s, with left-wing guerilla groups, far-right paramilitary groups and the government all fighting each other.

Colombia has also been a vital source of transit migration for asylum-seekers from South America. Thousands of migrants annually make the risky crossing through the Darién Gap north of the Panama-Colombia border with the help of criminal gangs. A Human Rights Watch report noted that over half a million people, including 113,000 children, crossed the Darién Gap in 2023. Indians taking the ‘donkey route’ to the US also go via Colombia and the Darién Gap.

A 2023 UNHCR report highlighted that around 6.9 million people had been internally displaced in Colombia, while the country hosted the world’s third-largest population of refugees and asylum-seekers worldwide. Over 95,000 persons alone were displaced in the first half of 2024, impacted by violence, large-scale displacements, and confinements. The number of Colombian asylum-seekers seeking entry via the US-Mexico border increased from 6,200 encounters in fiscal year (FY) 2021 to 125,200 in FY 2022.

The Washington Post on Monday reported that the two countries have a bilateral agreement allowing for a long-standing deportation policy. Until now, two deportation flights have gone to Colombia weekly without any problem. Witness at the Border, an advocacy group tracking flight data said that Colombia had accepted 475 deportation flights from the U.S. from 2020 to 2024, fifth behind Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador. It said that Colombia had accepted 126 deportation flights from the US in 2024 alone.