US Sanctions Colombia President After Drug Trafficking Claim

President Donald Trump sanctioned Colombia’s leader and members of his inner circle for allegedly enabling drug trafficking, personally targeting an ideological foe and frequent critic of US policy.

The measures announced Friday by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control apply to President Gustavo Petro, his wife, one of his sons, and his interior minister and former campaign chief, Armando Benedetti.

All four were added to a “specially designated nationals list.” The move represents the lowest point in US-Colombia relations in more than a century, and risks further setting back once-close cooperation between the nations in the fight against the cocaine trade.

The sanctions effectively bar Petro from the US financial system, freeze any assets he has in the US and ban US companies and citizens from engaging in financial transactions with him.

But while Trump has called Petro an “illegal drug leader,” Colombia has so far escaped crippling tariffs. Its business leaders lobbied to persuade Washington that relations go much deeper than Petro, whose term ends next August.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Petro was “a lunatic” but added that Colombian authorities were in general still very pro-American.

In announcing the sanctions, the US accused Petro of sharing confidential intelligence in a manner that threatened the integrity of the international financial system, and allying himself with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, whom Trump has claimed is a cartel leader.

“Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

Friday’s move follows Trump’s September decision to “decertify” Colombia as a partner in fighting narcotics, relegating the longtime US ally to the same category as Venezuela, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Myanmar. Petro also had his US visa canceled after he called on troops to disobey Trump’s order.

Petro said in a social media post that he’d hired a lawyer in the US and would defend himself from the claims.

“Fighting drug trafficking for decades and effectively has brought me this measure from the government of the society we helped so much to curb their cocaine consumption,” he said. He also placed the blame on Bernie Moreno, a Colombian-born US senator and critic of Petro, saying his “threat has been fulfilled.”

Moreno responded with a one-word post on X that’s slang for “mess around and find out.”

Benedetti, the interior minister, denied being involved in drug trafficking and said “Gringos go home,” in a post on X.

The Andean nation has historically been a close ally of Washington and is among the biggest beneficiaries of US aid this century, receiving about $14 billion, including military hardware and training to battle drug cartels and Marxist rebels. But relations between Trump and Petro went south quickly, with the two leaders having very different approaches to the war on drugs, migration and relations with Venezuela.

Worst in a Century

Relations are now at their worst since the US helped Panama get its independence from Colombia at the start of the 20th century, said Pedro Viveros, a Bogotá-based political analyst and strategist.

“This is very striking because not even former President Ernesto Samper, whose campaign was proved to have received drug money, was added to this list,” Viveros said. “With this decision, the US is closing the door on Gustavo Petro, but not on the Republic of Colombia.”

Colombia is currently at the center of the biggest cocaine boom in history, producing more than six times as much of the drug as it did when Pablo Escobar was gunned down in 1993. Cultivation of coca bushes, the raw material for making the drug, rose to 253,000 hectares last year, enough to produce more than 2,600 tons of cocaine, which is more than the output of Peru and Bolivia combined.

Adam Isacson, who studies US-Colombia policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that the decision is an abuse of a tool “which is supposed to sanction real, proven criminal behavior — not just people who are feuding with the president.”