Outside the Beltway

The Free Speech Presidency Rolls Onward

Colombia's President said the wrong thing and had his visa revoked.

Steven L. Taylor · Saturday, September 27, 2025 · 1 comment

Via Reuters: US to revoke Colombian president’s visa over comments at pro-Palestinian gathering.

The United States said it would revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he took to New York’s streets on Friday in a pro-Palestinian demonstration and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders.

“We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions,” the State Department posted on X.

Petro, addressing a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters outside the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, called for a global armed force with the priority to liberate Palestinians, adding, “This force has to be bigger than that of the United States.”

“That’s why from here, from New York, I ask all the soldiers of the army of the United States not to point their guns at people. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro said in Spanish.

I will grant it is probably not especially politic, nor perhaps even polite, to use a visit to the United States for the UN to then join a political protest. Perhaps more importantly, I understand that this is legal and that visas for dignitaries have been revoked in the past. Off the top of my head, I remember Colombian President Ernesto Samper having his visa revoked in the 1990s, but that was for alleged ties to drug cartels (which ended up not to be mere allegations).

Sure, my interest in Colombia sparked more attention to this story than it might have otherwise, as well as the fact that the Petro is a sitting head of state whom I have met and interviewed. Having said that, I am not a particular fan of the Petro presidency, or really of Petro’s political career. All of that is side trivia, at best. Further, the degree to which Petro cares about his visa to the US is limited, I expect, given that his term expires next year.

I post this because it is yet another example of the itchy trigger finger of the Trump administration to punish speech it doesn’t like. It is not an encouraging pattern, shall we say.

And it yet again undercuts what Trump and Vance said on the campaign trail, and that Trump specifically said in his second inaugural address. This is not a pro-free speech administration, and they constantly prove it.