Colombia Blocks US Deportation Flights Amid Tensions (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Rejected military deportation flights. Colombia blocking two U.S. military aircraft from landing in the South American country today with at least 160 people on board. President Trump now accusing President Petro of quote, jeopardizing U.S. national security, threatening Colombia with tariffs. Petro releasing a statement saying a migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity. He is now offering to send his presidential plane to bring deportees back to Colombia. ABC's Alex Prechet is in D.C. with more.

Speaker 2: Hey, Phil, yeah, this is President Trump really trying to make good on a campaign promise. If issue number one for him was the economy, issue 1B was immigration. And so you're seeing these giant shows of force really early into his administration. And even right now, I mean, ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement is carrying out these targeted operations in Chicago, kind of similar to what we saw in the Northeast late last week, along with some federal partners. But let's talk about those two U.S. military flights that were headed to Colombia. It's the first time in U.S. history that military aircraft had been used to deport migrants. We're told that Colombia refused to allow those two planes carrying 160 individuals to land. President Trump countering and saying that the planes were actually given permission to land before they even took off. But we're hearing from the Colombian president who is now offering via Twitter to send his presidential plane to bring deportees back to Colombia. He also notes in a tweet about rejecting the American military planes that Colombia would accept civilian deportation flights. So it seems to be a little bit of a war of words between the two leaders, but this is a part of an ongoing kind of contentious immigration battle that President Trump is weighing with a lot of our allies. Now, the other thing that's going on into this week, we've got another round of these confirmation hearings, and the one to really kind of mark your calendar for Thursday, Tulsi Gabbard, who's up for the Director of National Intelligence, is set for a hearing there. It's going to be fairly, fairly contentious, possibly the most contentious that we've seen yet. Gabbard has faced criticism from members of her own party for having a lack of experience, as they've put it, with intelligence, and also her record on it. Back in 2017, she visited with Bashar al-Assad, the now ousted leader of Syria, twice, and then voiced skepticism about the reports that he was using chemical weapons on his own people despite the U.S. intelligence that showed otherwise. Folks have questioned her. They've said that because of this, that she should not oversee the 18 intelligence agencies and the $100 billion budget that comes with this role, and Phil, a couple of other key hearings that are going on. We're gonna have Kash Patel, who's looking to become the Director of the FBI, and then also, also on the Hill for confirmation hearings is RFK Jr. this week for Secretary of Health and Human Services, so it'll be a busy week here in Washington. Phil?

Speaker 1: All right, Alex, thank you.