US President Donald Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after its president barred two US military planes carrying deported migrants from landing in the country.

Trump said the tariffs “on all goods” coming into the US from Colombia would be put in place “immediately”, and in one week the 25% tariffs would be raised to 50%.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro responded by saying he would impose retaliatory tariffs of 25% on the US.

Petro earlier on Sunday said he had denied entry to US military deportation flights. He said he would “receive our fellow citizens on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals” and migrants must be returned “with dignity and respect”.

US officials told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that two military planes from San Diego were due to land in Colombia on Sunday with migrant deportees, but those plans were scrapped due to complications.

In response, Trump announced “urgent and decisive retaliatory measures” in a post on TruthSocial. He said the US will impose a travel ban and “immediate visa revocations” on Colombian government officials, as well as its allies and supporters.

Trump also said there would be visa sanctions on supporters of the Colombian government, and enhanced Customs and Border Protection inspections “of all Colombian nationals and cargo on national security grounds”.

“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump added, saying his administration would not allow the Colombian government “to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the criminals they forced into the United States”.

Petro responded on X by announcing his own tariffs and celebrating Colombia’s heritage and resilience.

“Your blockade does not scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world,” he said.

He also offered his presidential plane to facilitate the “decent return” of deportees from the US who had been set to arrive in the country.

Also on Sunday, Petro said more than 15,666 Americans were in Colombia illegally – a figure the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

Petro said that unlike the Trump administration, he would “never” be seen carrying out a raid to return illegal US migrants.

The US imports about 20% of its coffee – worth nearly $2bn (£1.6bn) – from Colombia, as well as other goods like bananas, crude oil, avocados and flowers.

Tariffs will make importing these goods more expensive which, if passed onto the consumer, could mean higher coffee prices rising.

Importers could shift to other sources to avoid this, which would in turn hit Colombian producers by reducing a key market.

The sanctions and travel bans on the Colombian government and its supporters, and the breakdown in diplomatic relations that signals, are also significant.

This is now not just a war of trade, but a war of words.

It is no secret that Petro does not like Trump – he has heavily criticised his policies on migration and the environment in the past. That just ratcheted up.

Petro said Trump would “wipe out the human species because of greed” and accused Trump of considering Colombians an “inferior race.” He went on to say that he is “stubborn” and that while Trump can try to “carry out a coup” with “economic strength and arrogance” he will, in short, fight back.

“From today on, Colombia is open to the entire world, with open arms,” he said.

While Trump is unlikely to take threats from Colombia, this is something that should worry a US president who wants to tackle migration.

Trump’s own pick for deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, has argued that “working with other countries to stop such migratory flows” must be a “global imperative of US foreign policy”.

Tens of thousands of migrants from around the world head north towards the US after landing in South America each year, travelling up through Colombia, usually facilitated by criminal gangs.

The latest developments will no doubt make it harder for Trump’s administration to work with Colombia to stop this.

The feud between the two nations comes as Trump’s administration has vowed to carry out “mass deportations”. The president signed multiple executive orders related to immigration on his first day in office.

Some of Trump’s executive orders were signed with the aim of expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to arrest and detain unlawful migrants on US soil.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that 538 arrests were conducted on Thursday alone.

For comparison, ICE detained more than 149,700 people in the 2024 fiscal year under the Biden administration, which equals an average of 409 a day.

Trump declared a national emergency at the Mexico border, ordered officials to deny the right to citizenship to the children of migrants in the US illegally or on temporary visas and re-implemented his “Remain in Mexico” policy from his first term.

On Saturday, US Vice President JD Vance told CBS’s Face the Nation that he supports “doing law enforcement against violent criminals”.

“Just because we were founded by immigrants doesn’t mean that 240 years later that we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

Tom Homan, Trump’s “border tsar” told ABC News on Sunday that the military is currently at the US-Mexico border helping with departure flights on military planes and building infrastructure to secure the border.

“It’s sending a strong signal to the world: Our border is closed,” he said.

Trump campaigned on securing the southern border and reducing the number of undocumented immigrants who enter the US.

Hundreds of illegal immigrants have been deported from the United States following a directive from President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration.

Trump had on his first day in office signed a series of executive orders aimed at tackling illegal immigration.

He also declared the situation at the United States and Mexico border as a national emergency, just as he designated criminal cartels as terrorist organisations. The US president stopped the practice of granting automatic citizenship to children born in the US to undocumented immigrants.

Trump also signed an order suspending the US refugee resettlement programme for four months.

An enforcement operation began this week.

According to White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, 538 illegal immigrants were arrested in the first round of operations.

She wrote in a post on her X handle on Thursday, “The Trump administration arrested 538 illegal immigrant criminals, including a suspected terrorist, four members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and several individuals convicted of sex crimes against minors.”

However, according to the CBS News on Friday, two deportation flights had arrived overnight in Guatemala.

A Guatemalan migration official confirmed the arrivals, noting that one flight from El Paso carried 80 people, another flight from Tucson brought in 80 more, and a third flight from El Paso carried around 105 individuals.

Leavitt confirmed that the operation was far-reaching, stating, “The Trump Administration has also deported hundreds of illegal immigrant criminals via military aircraft. The largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway.”

This marked the beginning of an intensified effort to curb illegal immigration as part of Trump’s broader immigration policies.

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the “sadistic” murders of three young girls in an attack described as “shocking” and “pure evil”.

Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, died while eight other children and two adults – dance class leader Leanne Lucas and businessman Jonathan Hayes – were seriously wounded.

The 18-year-old refused to come into the courtroom as he was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court, having been removed from the dock earlier due to disruptive behaviour – which included demands to see a paramedic and shouts of “I feel ill”.

Sentencing him, judge Mr Justice Goose said: “Many who have heard the evidence might describe what he did as evil, who could dispute it?”

Earlier, the details of Rudakubana’s crimes were laid out in court for the first time in graphic detail – including CCTV and dashboard camera footage from outside the Hart Space studios on Hart Street.

The court heard how, just after 11:45 BST on 29 July, Rudakubana moved through the sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop, organised by Ms Lucas, “systematically” stabbing young girls as they sat making friendship bracelets and singing along to Swift’s music.

Prosecutor Deanna Heer KC also described how Rudakubana gloated about the attacks as he was escorted through Copy Lane police station after his arrest – saying he was “glad the children were dead”.

The teenager had booked a taxi to take him to Hart Street after leaving his home in Old School Close, Banks, west Lancashire, at 11:10 BST, the court was told.

Ms Heer played footage of Rudakubana asking the driver to point him to the address of the dance class – before getting out without paying.

The driver’s dashboard camera also captured Rudakubana walk up the stairs of the Hart Space building to the first-floor studio which had 26 children, Ms Lucas, and her colleague and friend Heidi Liddle inside.

Seconds later, the sounds of screaming children filled the courtroom and the footage showed girls streaming out of the Hart Space dance studio.

The families of the victims cried in the public gallery as Ms Heer played footage of three of the girls staggering into the street and collapsing – including two of the survivors and Alice.

Unlike Bebe and Elsie Dot, Alice had managed to get out of the building despite her grave injuries, but collapsed by the car of a woman who had arrived to pick up her daughter.

Inside the studio, Bebe had been subjected to 122 knife wounds, while Elsie Dot had 85.

Ms Liddle and one other child were hiding in a locked toilet on a landing outside – Ms Liddle later describing how she realised that some of the children had not escaped when she heard them begging Rudakubana to stop.

The police arrived at Hart Street shortly before 11:59 BST – three officers and a member of the public, window-cleaner Joel Verite, charged up those stairs to find Rudakubana stood over the body of Bebe King holding a knife.

Police body-camera footage showed him tackled to the floor as Mr Verite shouted in utter shock and horror at the injuries he saw had been inflicted on Bebe.

A short time later Ms Liddle and the child hiding with her were seen sobbing in terror and relief as the police told them it was safe to emerge.

‘We were easy prey’

One of the survivors, a seven-year-old girl referred to as Child A, had been pulled back inside the building by Rudakubana as she tried to escape and was stabbed repeatedly, before managing to stagger into the street where she fell to the ground.

A statement written by the mother of Child A, read by Ms Heer, said her father had been “broken” by what happened to his daughter.

“Our daughter has not only experienced the most violent, frenzied attack on her body, but she’s witnessed so much horror too.”

The leader of the dance class, Ms Lucas, who read her statement in court, looked around the packed courtroom at the family members of fellow victims and survivors as she spoke.

She said: “He targeted us because we were women and girls, vulnerable and easy prey.

“To discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible.

“For Alice, Elsie, Bebe, Heidi and the surviving girls, I’m surviving for you.”

Victim impact statements were also read out by Ms Heer, in which the grieving families of two of the murder victims branded their daughters’ killer as “pure evil” and said his actions had have left them in “continuous pain”.

Stan Reiz KC, mitigating, told the court Rudakubana had appeared to have been a “normal child” until he reached 13.

Mr Reiz said: “There is no psychiatric evidence before the court that could suggest that a mental disorder contributed to the defendant’s actions.

“However, he did make a transition from a normal, well-disciplined child to someone who was capable of committing acts of such shocking and senseless violence.”

In his sentencing remarks, Justice Goose said: “I am sure Rudakubana had the settled determination to carry out these offences and had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child – all 26 of them.”

Justice Goose confirmed the offences did not reach the legal definition of terrorism because he did not kill to further a political, religious or ideological cause.

However, he told the packed courtroom that whether the “motivation was terrorism or not misses the point”.

“What he did on 29 July last year has caused such shock and revulsion to the whole nation, that it must be viewed as being at the extreme level of crime”, the judge said.

“His culpability, and the harm he caused and intended, were at the highest.”

Rudakubana was sentenced for three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder, one of producing the biological toxin ricin and one of possession of an Al Qaeda training manual, an offence under the Terrorism Act.

In a statement after the hearing, Elsie’s family offered their gratitude to the emergency services who responded to the incident.

“We are so thankful for their bravery, compassion and strength which should serve as an inspiration to everybody,” they said.

The family also thanked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, King Charles and the Prince and Princess of Wales for arranging private meetings where they offered their condolences.

Earlier, the prime minister said “the thoughts of the entire nation” were with the families of Rudakubana’s victims.

Sir Keir said: “I want to say directly to the survivors, families and community of Southport – you are not alone. We stand with you in your grief.

“What happened in Southport was an atrocity and as the judge has stated, this vile offender will likely never be released.

“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve.”

Credit: BBC