A Colombian congresswoman who traveled to the United States to see firsthand the situation of her country’s migrants detained during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was so shocked by the poor conditions and allegations of mistreatment that she has asked President Gustavo Petro to declare a state of emergency to expedite deportation proceedings. She is also seeking international support for the creation of a verification mission.
Carmen Felisa Ramírez Boscán, a lawmaker representing Colombians abroad and currently campaigning for reelection in the March 8 legislative elections, recently visited a migrant detention center in Montgomery, Alabama. There, she spoke with 12 Colombian women, including one who is pregnant, who complained of urinary tract infections and inadequate medical care. One of the women, a 70-year-old, told her she had been transferred from another facility in chains, shackled by her neck, hands, and feet. Ramírez Boscán also spoke with 18 detained Colombians who complained of poor food, appalling conditions, and a lack of due process.
“I found an extremely serious situation. We are dealing with a humanitarian crisis of our fellow Colombians who are being illegally detained by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and it is creating an even worse situation, deteriorating their physical and mental health,” said the congresswoman, who is part of President Petro’s coalition, on Wednesday outside ICE offices in Miramar, north of Miami.
“They prefer to die in their own country. Many told me, ‘Look, I don’t care if I have to go back after coming here to seek asylum, knowing I have an open case, but I still want to go back. I don’t care if they kill me, as long as they kill me in my own country,’” the legislator recalled before adding, “We need to find alternatives to get the people who are there out of the conditions they’re in.”
Her visit comes amid the Trump administration’s historic anti-immigrant offensive, which has generated diplomatic friction with Colombia. Early last year, Petro blocked U.S. military deportation flights, denouncing the fact that migrants were being transported in chains like criminals and accusing the Trump administration of treating them inhumanely. The confrontation escalated into a diplomatic clash and a brief tariff battle, until Petro agreed to continue receiving deportees, but on planes provided by Colombia. Last month, on the eve of a meeting with Trump at the White House, the Colombian government announced the official resumption of transfers on Colombian military aircraft, with “20 flights, one per week.”
El racismo y la xenofobia, son males que padece la humanidad por creencias supremacistas que hoy criminalizan la migración, y nos convierte en blanco de un sistema que prioriza el aislamiento en pantanos, como el de Alligator Alcatraz, por encima de nuestra dignidad humana. pic.twitter.com/bVaKSSR63Y
— 𝒦𝒶𝓇𝓂ℯ𝓃 ℛ𝒶𝓂𝒾́𝓇ℯ𝓏 ℬℴ𝓈𝒸𝒶́𝓃 (@Wayunkerra) February 23, 2026
Colombia has been one of the United States’ main allies and trading partners in the region for decades, but the situation has become strained since Petro came to power in 2022 with a left-leaning agenda. However, at the friendly reconciliation meeting earlier this month in Washington, common interests were found, and the central theme was the fight against drug trafficking, a cornerstone of the bilateral relationship for the past four decades.
It is within this unstable bilateral context that Congresswoman Ramírez Boscán is touring the United States. She visited another detention center in Houston, Texas, to which she was denied access, and last Sunday she participated in the weekly interfaith vigil held in front of the infamous Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center in the Everglades.
Based in Switzerland since 2011, the congresswoman is a leader of the Wayuu indigenous people of La Guajira, and has represented Colombians abroad for the ruling Historical Pact coalition since 2022. Using figures from the Colombian Foreign Ministry and the academic initiative Immigration Policy Tracking Project, she believes there are 34,000 Colombians with deportation orders in the United States. There are no exact figures on how many Colombians are being held by U.S. immigration authorities, but the Embassy estimates around 2,600, a number that Ramírez Boscán considers very conservative, since her office has received reports of detainees who do not appear in that database.
A serious problem is that the flight frequency, one per week, is insufficient, the congresswoman pointed out. She has been identifying cases of people with serious health risks and informing the Colombian Foreign Ministry so that it can request ICE to prioritize them. “Of the 30 Colombians I spoke with, only three wanted to stay. The rest have withdrawn their asylum applications and requested deportation,” Ramírez Boscán said. “They don’t want to be detained indefinitely.”
According to the Colombian politician, her office receives dozens of requests every week asking them to intervene with the U.S. government. Declaring a state of emergency, she says, “would allow Colombia to allocate additional funds so that more planes can be brought in and more Colombians can return within a maximum of 90 days.” However, she notes, with an eye toward the elections, that the opposition in Colombia has rejected “any state of emergency.”
For the congresswoman, “it’s a challenge to make people understand that this is a priority issue.” “We want to raise awareness more broadly, inviting Latin American lawmakers who represent their diasporas from countries like Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina,” as well as lawmakers from Europe, “so that we can carry out a verification mission,” she says. A verification mission is an international mechanism of observers who monitor compliance with agreements, such as the one that oversees the peace accords in Colombia.
“We want to see the true situation of our fellow citizens,” she adds. “The U.S. government isn’t going to like this very much, but it’s something we have to do, because my hope, or rather our hope, is that through this collective effort, Latin American countries, as a bloc, will express a position on the immigration status of our citizens in the United States, based on respect for human rights and due process.”
U.S. authorities have blocked Democratic lawmakers from inspecting migrant detention centers, leading to lawsuits against the government. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has accused Democrats of using the visits as political “shows” and said that unannounced visits disrupt operations. The lawmakers argue that, under federal law, Congress has the right to conduct inspections, even without prior notice. A federal judge initially ruled in their favor in December, but the litigation continues.
Human rights organizations have denounced the inhumane conditions at the detention centers and demanded their closure. The DHS maintains that the allegations are false and unfounded and that detainees’ rights are guaranteed. Thomas Kennedy, of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, says that “it is shameful and illustrates the urgency of the situation at Alligator Alcatraz and other detention centers that a congresswoman from Colombia had to come to this country to advocate for their well-being.”
It is estimated that more than 1.7 million Colombians live in the U.S. — with some estimates exceeding 2 million — mostly residing in Florida, New York, and New Jersey. Their arrivals across the southern border peaked at nearly 20,000 people in May 2023 and December 2024.
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