WASHINGTON/BOGOTA — The US and Colombia pulled back from the brink of a trade war on Sunday after the White House said the South American nation had agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants.

US President Donald Trump had threatened tariffs and sanctions on Colombia to punish it for earlier refusing to accept military flights carrying deportees as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown.

But in a statement late on Sunday, the White House said Colombia had agreed to accept the migrants after all and Washington would not impose its threatened penalties.

“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on US military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” it said.

Draft orders imposing tariffs and sanctions on Colombia would be “held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement”, it added.

“Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump … expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States,” the White House statement said.

In a statement late on Sunday, Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said: “We have overcome the impasse with the US government.”

“The government of Colombia … has the presidential plane ready to facilitate the return of Colombians who were going to arrive in the country this morning on deportation flights.”

The statement did not specifically say that the agreement included military flights, but it did not contradict the White House announcement.

Mr. Murillo and Colombia’s ambassador to the United States will travel to Washington in coming days to follow up on agreements that led to the exchange of diplomatic notes between the two governments, the Colombian statement added.

Washington’s draft measures, now on hold, include imposing 25% tariffs on all Colombian goods coming into the US, which would go up to 50% in one week; a travel ban and visa revocations on Colombian government officials; and emergency treasury, banking and financial sanctions.

Trump also threatened to direct enhanced border inspections of Colombian nationals and cargo. Ahead of the announcement of an agreement on the flights, a State Department spokesperson said the United States had suspended visa processing at the US embassy in Bogota.

Colombia is the third-largest US trading partner in Latin America.

The US is Colombia’s largest trading partner, largely due to a 2006 free trade agreement that generated $33.8 billion in two-way trade in 2023 and a $1.6-billion US trade surplus, according to US Census Bureau data.

Alejo Czerwonko, chief investment officer for emerging markets Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, said Colombia relied on access to the US market for about a third of its exports, or about 4% of its Gross Domestic Product.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro earlier condemned the military deportation flights and said he would never carry out a raid to return handcuffed Americans to the US.

“We are the opposite of the Nazis,” he wrote in a post on social media platform X.

He also said however that Colombia would welcome home deported migrants on civilian planes, and offered his presidential plane to facilitate their “dignified return.”

‘DEGRADING TREATMENT’
Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency and has imposed a crackdown since taking office last Monday.

He directed the US military to help with border security, issued a broad ban on asylum and took steps to restrict citizenship for children born on US soil.

The use of US military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is unusual. US military aircraft carried out two flights, each with about 80 migrants, to Guatemala on Friday.

Mexico also refused a request last week to let a US military aircraft land with migrants.

Trump has said he is thinking about imposing 25% duties on imports from Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1 to force further action against illegal immigrants and fentanyl flowing into the US. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged US Agency for International Development (USAID) workers to join the effort to transform how Washington allocates aid around the world in line with Trump’s “America First” policy. It threatened “disciplinary action” for any staff ignoring the administration’s orders.

A sharply worded memo sent on Saturday to more than 10,000 staff at USAID offered further guidance to Friday’s “stop-work” directive that effectively put a sweeping freeze on US foreign aid worldwide. The memo, reviewed by Reuters, laid out expectations for the workforce on how to achieve Trump’s goals.

“We have a responsibility to support the President in achieving his vision,” Ken Jackson, assistant to the administrator for management and resources wrote in the internal memo, titled “Message and Expectation to the Workforce.”

“The President has given us a tremendous opportunity to transform the way we approach foreign assistance for decades to come,” the memo said. Reuters confirmed the authenticity of the memo with several sources.

Since taking office last week, Mr. Trump has taken steps toward fulfilling his vow to remake a federal bureaucracy he believes was hostile to him during his 2017-2021 presidency. He has reassigned or fired hundreds of federal workers in simultaneous moves against a swath of agencies.

Hours after taking office, Mr. Trump ordered a 90-day pause in foreign aid to review if it was aligned with his foreign policy priorities. On Friday, the State Department issued a stop-work order worldwide even for existing and appropriated assistance, calling into question billions of dollars of life-saving aid.

The United States is the largest single donor of aid globally. In fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72 billion in assistance. It provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024.

USAID and the White House National Security Council (NSC) did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Friday’s memo shocked the humanitarian groups and communities conducting development aid across the globe. While the scope of the directive appears far-reaching, uncertainties linger over how it will be carried out.

The memo on Saturday offered only partial clarity.

The pause on foreign aid spending means “a complete halt,” it said. The only exceptions are for emergency humanitarian food assistance and for government officials returning to their duty stations. Waivers allowing delivery of emergency food during the review period will require “detailed information and justification.”

The memo said further waivers would require two layers of approval — one from USAID leadership and another by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“Any waiver must be thoroughly justified to demonstrate that the specific assistance for which the waiver is sought is necessary for lifesaving purposes, cannot be performed by current US direct hire staff, or would otherwise pose significant risks to national security,” the memo said.

All foreign assistance programs will undergo “comprehensive review” during the pause in spending, the memo says. “It is important to emphasize that it is no longer business as usual. Every program will be thoroughly scrutinized.”

Saturday’s directive also banned any communications outside the agency, including between USAID and the State Department, unless they are approved by the former’s front office.

“Failure to abide by this directive, or any of the directives sent out earlier this week and in the coming weeks, will result in disciplinary action,” it said.

USAID began sending a notice to contractors ordering them to “immediately issue stop-work orders” and to “amend, or suspend existing awards.”

VULNERABLE POPULATIONS
Humanitarian organizations and other donors are scrambling to understand how the directive will impact life-saving operations in countries across the globe. It is too soon to tell whether or what specific services will have to be paused, they said.

Among the places the US plays a crucial life-saving role is famine-stricken Sudan, where at least 24.6 million people urgently need food assistance, according to a December report from the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC), a global food security watchdog. The US provided 45% percent of humanitarian aid recorded by the United Nations (UN) for Sudan in 2024.

“Any reduction in funding would inevitably affect the most vulnerable people relying on humanitarian operations in Sudan,” said a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Even if the policy does allow emergency food assistance to continue, it does not mention other life-saving services required to treat people suffering the effects of acute malnutrition and starvation.

“Hunger doesn’t just leave people with an empty stomach. It weakens the body’s ability to fight off infections and diseases, making them so much more vulnerable to illness, which can lead to serious health problems or even death,” said Deepmala Mahla, chief humanitarian officer for the relief organization CARE.

“This is not just about funding,” she said. “It is about the very survival of the most vulnerable in conflict zones.” — Reuters

SEOUL — Both engines of the Jeju Air plane that crashed last month contained duck remains, according to a preliminary report on Monday, with authorities still trying to determine what caused the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil.

The six-page report released by South Korean authorities a month after the crash said both engines of the Boeing 737-800 jet contained DNA from Baikal Teals, a type of migratory duck that flies to South Korea for winter in huge flocks.

But the report provided no initial conclusions about what may have caused the plane to land without its landing gear deployed, and why flight data recorders stopped recording in the final four minutes of the flight.

The Jeju Air flight from Bangkok on Dec. 29 overshot Muan Airport’s runway as it made an emergency belly landing and crashed into an embankment containing navigation equipment, called localizers, killing all but two of the 181 people and crew members on board.

“After the crash into the embankment, fire and a partial explosion occurred. Both engines were buried in the embankment’s soil mound, and the fore fuselage scattered up to 30-200 meters from the embankment,” the report said, providing some new pictures of the accident site.

The localizer aids navigation of an aircraft making an approach to the runway, and the structure built of reinforced concrete and earth at Muan airport supporting the system’s antennae likely contributed to the high death toll, experts have said.

The investigation will tear down the engines, examine components in depth, analyze in-flight and air traffic control data, and investigate the embankment, localizers and evidence of bird strike, the report said about its next steps.

“These all-out investigation activities aim to determine the accurate cause of the accident,” it said.

MAYDAY
The report highlighted much of the initial findings by the South Korean investigators that were shared with victims’ families on Saturday, including the pilots’ awareness of a flock of birds on the plane’s final approach.

The exact time the bird strike was reported by the pilots remains unconfirmed, the accident report said, but the aircraft “made an emergency declaration (Mayday x 3) for a bird strike during a go-around.”

The report does not say what may have led to the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and Flight Data Recorder (FDR) to stop recording simultaneously just before the pilots declared the emergency.

The aircraft was at an altitude of 498 feet (152 meters) flying at 161 knots (298 km/h or 185 mph) about 1.1 nautical miles (2 km or 1.3 miles) from the runway at the moment the flight recorders stopped recording, it said.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a U.N. agency, requires accident investigators to produce a preliminary report within 30 days of the accident and encourages a final report to be made public within 12 months.

South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board has shared its report with ICAO, Thailand, and the United States and France, which are the home states for the plane and engine manufacturers, an official said on Monday. — Reuters