Readout of Senior Administration Officials Meeting with President Gustavo Petro of Colombia

On Wednesday, September 20, 2023, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall, and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma met with President Gustavo Petro and Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva of Colombia during the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York. They discussed issues of critical importance to the United States and Colombia, including our vital counter-drug cooperation, the challenges presented by mass migration from Venezuela, and the urgent need to take action to manage the growing humanitarian, public health, and environmental crisis in the Darien region that is being caused by unprecedented migratory transit through the dangerous jungle terrain between Colombia and Panama.