Petro at CELAC: No migrant can go to jail to be treated as a criminal and a slave

Published at: 09/04/2025 04:33 PM

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, described it unfair for migrants to arrive in their countries in chains, so that no space of exclusion over migration can be accepted.

During the 9th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), held in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Petro refused to allow migrants to be sent to El Salvador to be treated as criminals and slaves.

“Migration is just the consequence of this geographical inequality of the effect of the climate crisis on the territory. Do we solve it by putting chains and taking the migrant population to El Salvador to prisons for criminals?” , questioned the president of New Granada.

He pointed out that he has his personal opinion “as to whether or not they should be there, but what he did criticize is that no migrant can go to such a prison because he would be treated as a criminal and as a slave and he is not, he is a human being,” he reiterated.

In this regard, he stressed that “Latin America cannot lower the flag of human dignity”, so he called for the unity of nations to face this situation promoted by the United States (USA), which transferred more than 240 Venezuelan migrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, without having committed any crime.

Mazo News Team