Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the US decision to revoke his visa, arguing that it violates international law and rules of diplomatic immunity, measure taken by the State Department, claiming that Petro urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence during an act in New York, referring to protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“What the U.S. government is doing to me breaks all the rules of immunity on which the functioning of the United Nations and its General Assembly is based. There is total immunity for presidents attending the Assembly,” the president wrote on his X account a few hours after the news broke.
The head of state of Colombia assures that the prohibition of entry into the U.S. for the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to speak before the eightieth session of the UN General Assembly, as well as this revocation of his visa, demonstrate that the U.S. government no longer complies with international law.
Llegué a Bogotá y me encuentro que ya no tengo Visaa EEUU. Para ir a Ibagué a la gran conventración tolimense por la democracia no necesito Visa.
Separar a EEUU de Colombia es lo que necesitan las mafias.
Lo que hace el gobierno de EEUU conmigo, rompe todas las normas de…
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) September 27, 2025
Petro bases his assertion on the fact that Washington is withdrawing his visa for demanding that the U.S. and Israeli armies stop supporting the genocide in the Gaza Strip, since the United States is the main financier of weapons and intelligence for the Israeli government.
The legal secretary of the Colombian presidency waived his US visa in solidarity with the president. Despite this, President Petro declared that Trump is welcome in Colombia, although he recommended him not to be surrounded by genocides, and clarified that while US citizens will not be banned from entering, but war criminals or against humanity will not be allowed into the country.
The measure announced by Washington is presented as punishment for the strong accusations made by the Colombian president during his speech at the 80th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), as well as in the massive marches that took place in New York against the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In his speech before the General Assembly, Petro criticized the anti-drug policy of the United States, and pointed out that Washington uses the fight against drug trafficking as a pretext to exercise its control over the resources of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, during a rally against Israel’s extermination campaigns in Gaza, Petro proposed that the General Assembly of the United Nations approve a resolution allowing the formation of a “Salvation Army of the World,” whose first and urgent mission would be to “liberate Palestine.”
Petro asserted that if two-thirds of the nations vote in favour of the resolution, the voting countries should take responsibility for setting up this military unit to enforce international justice, which “has to be larger than the US one. That’s why from here, from New York I ask all U.S. Army soldiers to disobey the order of Trump. I ask you not to point your guns at humanity.”