Bogota, Colombia – Opposition politicians and migrant communities in Colombia have decried President Abelardo de la Espriella’s plan to launch a deportation campaign against foreign nationals living irregularly in the country.

De la Espriella unveiled the crackdown during a security council meeting on Sunday, ordering police to begin operations as soon as this week.

The policy is expected to primarily affect Venezuelans, by far the largest migrant population in Colombia.

It marks a stark departure from measures under previous administrations, which largely sought to create legal immigration pathways for those fleeing hardship in neighbouring Venezuela.

“I will not accept any illegal immigrants, wherever they come from,” said de la Espriella in a video shared on the social media platform X on Sunday evening. “They will have to leave and be deported. It is a political decision I am taking responsibility for.”

The far-right president – who was inaugurated earlier this month – said his government will first target those “committing crimes” and then those whose “status has not been regularised”.

While de la Espriella did not address any specific nationalities, some 95 percent of Colombia’s migrant population are Venezuelan, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental group.

Approximately 2.8 million Venezuelans reside in Colombia, making it home to the largest Venezuelan migrant community in the world.

While nearly 2 million have a Temporary Protection Permit (PPT) authorising them to live in the country, an estimated 500,000 lack permission to be in Colombia, according to migration authorities. Many of them were granted temporary permits that have since expired.

De la Espriella, a political outsider, pledged to tackle illegal immigration during his presidential campaign, his first bid for elected office.

The former lawyer has aligned himself with right-wing leaders such as US President Donald Trump, who initiated his own deportation campaign in the United States.

De la Espriella’s declaration on Sunday triggered uproar among opposition leaders, including leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, who narrowly lost the presidency in a June run-off. He leads the Historic Pact, the largest party in Colombia’s Congress.

“Today, de la Espriella has added xenophobia to all the authoritarian, despotic and discriminatory traits of his policies,” Cepeda wrote on X.

Cepeda then accused de la Espriella of failing to protect Colombian deportees from the United States.

“De la Espriella is bold enough to target migrants from Latin American countries in Colombia, yet cowardly when it comes to protecting our fellow migrants in the United States,” he said.

Maria del Mar Pizarro, a Historic Pact congresswoman, also denounced de la Espriella’s plans in an interview with Al Jazeera. She questioned whether the deportation campaign was about security or discrimination.

“Foreign nationals who commit crimes must be prosecuted,” she said. “But persecuting and deporting someone — simply because their immigration status is not in order — is populism, not security.”

Given the porous nature of the roughly 2,200-kilometre (1,370-mile) land border between the two countries, Pizarro added that there is little to stop deported Venezuelans from returning to Colombia.

“Without border control, legalisation and intelligence efforts against criminal gangs, the government pays for the deportation, and the problem returns,” she said.

Venezuelan diaspora fears policy implications

De la Espriella has announced that the deportation operation will begin with a pilot programme in the coastal city of Barranquilla, which is home to an estimated 182,000 Venezuelans.

Members of the Venezuelan diaspora in the city, however, fear that the crackdown will feed into stereotypes about their community.

“We must not confuse irregular immigration status with criminality. They are two completely different things,” said Juan Carlos Viloria Doria, the vice president of Venezuelans in Barranquilla, a migrant advocacy organisation.

While he backed the need to prosecute those who commit crimes, he said the law should apply to everyone “independent of nationality”.

Viloria also noted that many migrants could face political persecution if deported back to Venezuela.

Experts at the United Nations and other human rights watchdogs have accused the Venezuelan government of “repressive” activities, including the arbitrary detention and torture of political dissidents.

“We have people who left because they believed their lives, their freedom, or their safety were at risk,” Viloria explained. “Added to that are the economic, social and humanitarian conditions that Venezuela still faces.”

Despite being home to the world’s largest petroleum reserves, Venezuela has suffered from a plummeting gross domestic product (GDP) and rampant hyperinflation in the past decade.

Critics of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) say it has presided over chronic economic mismanagement, funnelling oil profits to a small elite while underfunding public services.

The Venezuelan government, however, argues it has been constrained by US sanctions, which have affected oil revenue, trade and foreign investment.

Faced with Venezuela’s economic crisis and threats of political persecution, some 7.6 million citizens have left the country since 2014, according to the UN.

Ronald Vergara moved to Colombia in 2016 and founded Fundacion Hermanos Caminantes, a nongovernmental organisation that supports recently arrived migrants. He fears how de la Espriella’s crackdown may harm an already struggling community.

“It would truly be inhumane to deport people who came here to survive and to work – decent people, who account for the majority of us,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite living in Colombia for 10 years, Vergara was only granted a Temporary Protection Permit a few months ago, due to delays in the system. He said that residing in Colombia without papers limited his opportunities.

“I always felt excluded. I was never able to get a job that paid a decent wage,” he explained.

Vergara also said he has seen cases where those who had a Temporary Protection Permit lost their legal status because their identity card was lost or stolen. Thousands of others are still waiting to be granted their papers, including his son.

“He’s 17 and about to graduate from high school, but he can’t graduate without the PPT,” said Vergara.

A departure from political tradition

De la Espriella’s announcement heralds a new era of anti-immigrant politics in Colombia, according to experts.

Since the Venezuelan migration crisis began, successive administrations in Bogota have responded by offering new arrivals assistance and opportunities for integration.

In 2017, for instance, then-President Juan Manuel Santos introduced a two-year temporary permit for Venezuelans called the Special Permit of Permanence and bolstered humanitarian assistance on the border.

His successor, right-wing leader Ivan Duque, severed relations with Caracas in 2019, closing the land border to vehicular traffic and suspending air travel. But he still offered migrants the chance to remain in Colombia by rolling out the PPT in 2021.

Most recently, Colombia’s first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, presided over a thaw in bilateral relations with Venezuela and adopted a pro-migrant stance. His presidency ended this year, with de la Espriella’s victory.

Ronal Rodriguez, a spokesperson at the Venezuela Observatory, a research centre at Bogota’s Rosario University, said de la Espriella’s policies interrupt a years-long trend.

“Everyone had a favourable stance toward migration and, in particular, used language that promoted integration,” Rodriguez explained.

“Unfortunately, I believe that this ends – for the moment – with what President Abelardo de la Espriella is now saying.”

While the president has pledged a crackdown on irregular migrants, the full details of his deportation platform have yet to be revealed.

For Rodriguez, de la Espriella may yet back down from his bold declarations.

He hopes that the president will “reconsider and return to the Colombian government’s policy of integration”.