Colombia’s foreign minister has renounced her U.S. visa in a gesture that shows how quickly the diplomatic dispute between Bogotá and Washington has widened.
The supplied Independent report says Rosa Villavicencio gave up her visa in protest after the U.S. State Department revoked President Gustavo Petro’s visa. The sequence is politically important because it turns a personal travel document into a public signal of solidarity and resistance.
The immediate trigger was Petro’s appearance at a New York protest against the war in Gaza. According to the report, he called for the creation of an international army to “liberate” the West Bank and Gaza Strip and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders. Hours later, the State Department said it would cancel Petro’s visa because of what it described as his reckless and incendiary actions.
Villavicencio’s response was not a routine administrative move. The report quotes Colombia’s foreign ministry as saying it was not interested in diplomatic visas that limit opinions or restrict sovereignty. That framing matters because it casts the dispute as one about national dignity and political speech, not merely travel permissions.
The evidence packet also shows the broader context is already strained. The Trump administration had earlier put Colombia on a list of countries it says are not meeting their international commitments to curb drug trafficking. That means the visa fight sits inside a wider deterioration in bilateral relations.
The report notes that Petro was already back in Colombia when the cancellation was announced, after several days in New York for the U.N. General Assembly. He later said on X that he did not care about the punishment because he also holds Italian citizenship, which may allow him to travel to the United States without a visa. The supplied evidence does not say whether that would change his future travel plans.
What makes the foreign minister’s move notable is the rarity of such a step. Immigration lawyers quoted by the Independent said it is unusual for holders of non-immigrant visas to renounce them, and that people who do not want to travel can simply let the visa expire. That makes the protest highly visible even if it may have limited practical effect.
Still, visibility is the point. By renouncing her visa, Villavicencio aligned herself with Petro and sent a message that the Colombian government sees the State Department’s action as more than a narrow consular decision. The visa cancellation and the renunciation together deepen the diplomatic rift and suggest that neither government was backing away quickly.
The evidence does not indicate whether the United States has responded directly to Villavicencio’s action. It does show that a dispute that began with a protest in New York has now become a broader symbol of friction between two governments already under strain.
