The United States has announced it will revoke the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro after he urged American soldiers to defy orders from President Donald Trump during a speech in New York.
The State Department described Petro’s comments, delivered at a pro-Palestinian rally on Friday, as “reckless and incendiary.” Petro had been in the U.S. for the UN General Assembly but was already en route back to Bogotá when the decision was made public, according to Colombian media.
In a video shared on social media, Petro addressed demonstrators with a megaphone in Spanish, calling for the creation of a “world salvation army, whose first task is to liberate Palestine.” He urged U.S. soldiers to “disobey Trump’s order” and instead “obey the order of humanity.”
He went further, comparing the moment to World War I and calling on young people in Israel and the United States to turn their weapons “toward tyrants and fascists” rather than civilians.
The State Department said Petro’s appeal amounted to incitement, writing on social media that the visa revocation was a direct response to his “reckless and incendiary actions.”
Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti criticized Washington’s move, suggesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa should have been canceled instead. “But since the empire protects him, it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face,” Benedetti posted on X.
Relations between Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, and the Trump administration have been deteriorating. Earlier this week at the UN, Petro called for a criminal inquiry into U.S. airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean suspected of drug trafficking, which he described as an “act of tyranny.”
He alleged that some of those killed could have been Colombian and accused Washington of working with drug cartels, while his government encouraged farmers to abandon coca cultivation. The U.S. has maintained the strikes are part of anti-drug operations targeting Venezuela, whose government it accuses of running a cartel.
The dispute comes as Washington has also denied visas to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and about 80 Palestinian officials, preventing them from attending the UN General Assembly despite the convention that world leaders are permitted entry for the gathering.