Colombian Asylum Seekers Hoped de la Espriella Would Be a Bridge to Trump. Turns Out He is.

On August 7, Colombia will swear in its new president, the far-right firebrand and Trump-backed Abelardo de la Espriella, or “The Tiger” as he’s often called. The White House’s support during the campaign played a key role in de la Espriella’s June victory.

It also helped him secure more than 80% of votes cast by overseas Colombians, many of them in the US, and many now the target of deportation efforts that de la Espriella himself appears ready to support.

Fernando (who asked that we only use his first name) fled Colombia with his family in 2022, a year that saw a record 547,000 Colombians leave the country amid escalating violence and political instability. (The non-partisan Migration Policy Institute estimates the number of unauthorized Colombians now in the US at 444,000, up from 182,000 in 2019.)

According to Fernando, whose asylum case remains pending, he and his family faced mounting threats from local criminal groups in the rural region of Colombia where they ran a small business. Faced with demands for money he didn’t have, and fearing for his life and that of his family, he made the decision to leave.

Criminal groups have expanded across much of Latin America in recent years, explaining in part the region’s dramatic swing to the right in recent elections.

Now living in the Bay Area, Fernando says he was drawn by de la Espriella’s promise of “la mano dura,” or iron fist, a style of politics defined by hardline, tough-on-crime policies that have often veered into human rights violations and political persecution in countries across Latin America.

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele is currently the most well-known and popular embodiment of la mano dura. His presidency — marked by extensive and documented human rights abuses — has inspired leaders from Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa to Chile’s Antonio Kast to de la Espriella himself, whose campaign was replete with promises to crush Colombia’s criminal groups while constructing a series of mega-prisons akin to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT.

For Colombians like Fernando, whose lives had been upended by the country’s crumbling security situation, the message resonated. But there was an added element to de la Espriella’s allure.

A former litigator turned businessman — who made a name and modest fortune for himself defending politicians indicted for corruption, as well as men with known ties to drug traffickers and paramilitary groups — de la Espriella is also a U.S. citizen.

“You think that maybe because of that, there’s a chance they’ll give us a little more support here, where we can settle down more, feel safer,” said Fernando. He explains that for Colombians like himself living in the US with liminal legal status, the hope was that de la Espriella would act on their behalf as a bridge to the White House.

And in fact, the soon-to-be president appears willing to assume that role, though perhaps not in the way Fernando imagined.

On June 22, Colombian American Republican Senator Bernie Moreno (R – Oh) met with de la Espriella and posted a message soon after on the social media platform, X. The message read, in part, the president-elect had “immediately agreed that ANY Colombian citizen claiming asylum [in the US] should be returned to Colombia…”

Moreno ended the post writing, “Coming to America is a privilege, not a right.”

For Colombians like Fernando, it was devastating.

“It took us completely by surprise,” he noted, adding the thought of returning to Colombia now, after several years living and working in the US, and with the security situation in the country increasingly fragile, is “complicated.”

According to recent data from TRAC Reports, in fiscal year 2026, Colombia ranked fifth among nationalities with the most deportation orders issued by U.S. judges, totaling 36,651 removals. Mexico remained at the top of the list, followed by Honduras, Guatemala and Venezuela.

Among those detained was Franklin Humberto Coral Garrido, better known as Beto Coral, an online activist who was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for his criticism of de la Espriella. In a June 16 memo, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote Coral’s online activism “undermines U.S. foreign policy interests.”

Coral, who came to the US in 2015 and, like Fernando, had a pending asylum case, was deported to Colombia on July 16 after spending one month in ICE detention.

For Fernando, his case is emblematic of the administration’s weaponization of the U.S. immigration system. “We have a right to our opinions,” he insisted.

The July 14 killing of 26-year-old Colombian Joan Sebastián Guerrero in Biddeford Maine by an ICE agent during a traffic stop adds to the growing sense of unease among Colombians here. Guerrero, who was not the target of the operation, was killed in front of his three-year-old daughter.

For Fernando, who works as a delivery driver, the fear of being pulled over by ICE is a daily reality.

He’s also taken note of de la Espriella’s silence in the wake of Guererro’s death, in contrast to repeated demands by outgoing President Gustavo Petro that Colombian nationals slated for deportation be treated humanely and “with dignity.”

“I think that was a very good thing Petro did,” acknowledged Fernando, adding, “he has always cared about the issue of migration.”

Reflecting on his vote, Fernando points back to Trump’s 2024 election win and the historic inroads made among Latino voters.

“Just like Latinos did when electing Donald Trump … I did the same. I voted for Abelardo because of some of his proposals,” said Fernando, “but without the intention that those same policies would capture and sweep people like me up.”