The United States State Department on Friday announced it would revoke the visa of Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, over what it described as “incendiary actions” during a pro-Palestinian street protest in New York.
“Earlier today, Colombian president @petrogustavo stood on a NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” the State Department said in a post on X.
“We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions,” it added.
A video shared on Petro’s social media account showed him addressing a large crowd in Spanish through a megaphone, with his translator calling on “nations of the world” to raise an army “larger than that of the United States.”
In his remarks, Petro urged American soldiers not to obey “Trump’s order” but instead to follow what he described as the “order of humanity.”
A source from the Colombian presidency confirmed to AFP that Petro left New York on Friday night and was on his way to Bogotá.
Petro has said he holds Italian citizenship and would therefore not require a US visa to enter the country.
The Colombian leader was in New York for the UN General Assembly, where he criticised the Trump administration and called for an international criminal inquiry into recent US military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean.
Petro claimed that the strikes killed more than a dozen unarmed youths, some of whom he suspected were Colombian. Washington defended the action as part of an anti-drug operation off Venezuela, accusing President Nicolás Maduro of running a cartel.
The Trump administration has since deployed eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, its largest show of force in the region in years, fuelling fears in Venezuela of a possible invasion.
Relations between Washington and Bogotá have deteriorated under Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president. Last week, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as an ally in the anti-narcotics fight but held back from imposing sanctions.
Reacting to the visa revocation, Colombia’s Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, wrote on X that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa should have been withdrawn instead, accusing Washington of shielding him while punishing Petro for “speaking the truth.”
