Colombia’s new president has told migration officers to start deporting people without regular status, ending — at least in rhetoric — more than a decade in which Bogotá was the main host for Venezuelans fleeing crisis next door.
Abelardo de la Espriella, in office since August 7, gave the order at a Sunday security council in Barranquilla, the government’s alternate seat. A leaked video of the meeting circulated Monday. “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,” he said. He added: “I will not accept illegal migration. First Colombians, second Colombians and third Colombians.”
Joint operations by Migración Colombia and the police are supposed to begin this week. The president said the decision is both political and administrative, and that he will “assume” the cost. It is a sharp turn from the Temporary Protection Statute created by decree in March 2021, which offered a free permit and made Colombia an international reference point for regularization. Colombia took in almost a third of the 7.8 million people who have left Venezuela since 2015, under governments of different political stripes.
The numbers in play are large and disputed. The UN refugee agency estimated about three million Venezuelans living in Colombia in 2025. Migración Colombia data from January, cited by La Silla Vacía, put roughly 82 percent of Venezuelan migrants in regular status and close to 500,000 without it. The Venezuela Observatory at Universidad del Rosario has put the irregular figure higher, at 848,000, including 193,000 minors.
Critics moved quickly. Researcher Ronal Rodríguez said a person in irregular status is not a criminal. Congresswoman María Fernanda Carrascal of the Pacto Histórico called the measure “an affront to human rights.” Academic Andrés Sampayo has estimated Venezuelan migrants’ contribution to the Colombian economy at around $3 billion a year in consumption, taxes, and entrepreneurship. Any mass return would also require cooperation from Venezuela, which shares a 2,219-kilometer land border and is in a U.S.-backed political transition under acting president Delcy Rodríguez.