Colombia’s Petro accuses U.S. of murder on the Caribbean, prompting Trump to halt aid, hike tariffs

By Simon Romero and Genevieve Glatsky

President Gustavo Petro of Colombia accused the United States of murdering an innocent fisherman in an attack on a boat that the American authorities claimed had been carrying illicit drugs, prompting President Trump to declare on Sunday that he would slash assistance to Colombia, one of Washington’s top aid recipients in Latin America, and impose new tariffs on the country’s goods.

Colombia President Gustavo Petro

The feuding between the two leaders reflected rising tensions in the region over the huge U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean targeting Colombia’s neighbor, Venezuela. U.S. forces have killed dozens of people in recent weeks aboard vessels that the Trump administration says were ferrying drugs from Venezuela.

The administration has provided no evidence to support the claims beyond descriptions of intelligence assessments and declassified videos of portions of the attacks. Legal specialists have called such killings illegal, because militaries cannot lawfully target civilians who do not pose a threat in the moment and are not directly participating in hostilities.

“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Mr. Petro wrote on social media. He said the man killed in the mid-September attack, Alejandro Carranza, was a “lifelong fisherman” whose boat had experienced damage and was adrift, probably in Colombian waters, at the time of the attack. His description of Mr. Carranza and his boat could not be immediately confirmed.

Migrants headed from Panama to Colombia in May after failing to enter the United. Colombia says such boats could be subject to attack under the U.S. anti-drug policy.

Colombia is by far the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and a much larger player in the global drug trade than Venezuela, which produces negligible amounts of cocaine and plays essentially no role in the production or smuggling of fentanyl.

Soon after Mr. Trump issued his call to halt aid to Colombia, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yet another strike on a vessel, which Mr. Hegseth claimed was connected to a Colombian rebel group, the National Liberation Army. Without providing evidence for his claims, Mr. Hegseth said the boat, which was attacked on Friday, had been carrying narcotics.

The deployment of U.S. forces is the largest in the region in decades, including about 10,000 U.S. troops and dozens of military aircraft and ships. While the Trump administration says it is a counterdrug and counterterrorism mission, officials have privately made clear that the main goal is to drive Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.

Mr. Petro, a leftist and former member of an urban guerrilla group who became president in 2022, has repeatedly expressed support for Mr. Maduro as the crisis simmers between Washington and Caracas. The Colombian president has shown a willingness to spar with Mr. Trump, in sharp contrast to the cautious stances most other Latin American leaders have adopted with the Trump administration.
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Credit: New York Times