The US Treasury Department announced on Friday that it is sanctioning Colombian President Gustavo Petro, accusing him of playing a “role in the global illicit drug trade.” Also sanctioned are Petro’s wife and son, and Colombia’s interior minister.

“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.

Petro, who has previously rejected such accusations, swiftly responded to the announcement, saying on X that he had retained an American lawyer and intended to fight the sanctions.

“Fighting drug trafficking for decades — and doing so effectively — has brought me this measure from the government of the very society we helped so much to curb its cocaine consumption,” Petro said, referring to the United States. “Quite a paradox, but not one step back, and never on our knees.”

Tensions between Petro’s government and US President Donald Trump have grown for months, especially since the United States began ramping up military activity in the southern Caribbean.

Petro has sharply criticized US military strikes on alleged drug boats in the region, accusing the United States of being “murderers.” He has suggested that some of the boats carried innocent Colombians.

At least one US strike in the Caribbean over the past two months targeted Colombian nationals on a boat that had sailed from Colombia, two people briefed by the Pentagon told CNN earlier this month. Another strike on a submersible left two survivors, one of whom was Colombian.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Colombia, described the sanctions on Petro as “the personalization of a bilateral crisis.”

On the “day-to-day level and institutional level, there really isn’t a problem between the US and Colombia. Where the problem is this personal crisis, personal conflict,” she told CNN, noting it was not the first time there have been disagreements between Washington and Bogota.

“The Colombian military and security forces have worked hand-in-hand with the United States for close to four decades,” she told CNN. “They are by far the most capable and willing partners that the US has in the region.”

Colombia had long been Washington’s most reliable ally in South America on national security and defense. In 2022, the Biden administration designated the Andean country as a “major non-NATO ally.”

The sanctions were imposed days after Trump said he had halted “all payments” to Colombia, claiming that Petro “does nothing to stop” the production of drugs in his country. The US State Department also revoked Petro’s visa at the conclusion of the UN General Assembly session last month.

CNN has reached out to the Colombian presidency for further comment.

Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti also criticized the sanctions in a post on X, writing that he had “never entered the house of even a single drug trafficker.”

“For the US, a non-violent statement is the same as being a drug trafficker,” Benedetti added. “Gringos go home.”

Petro’s son Nicholas, in a post, called the move “political and judicial persecution without precedent” and said that he will “turn to international organizations to defend my rights.”

The US Treasury Department said Nicolas Petro was arrested in Colombia in 2023 “for money laundering and illicit enrichment over allegations that he funneled money received from drug traffickers into Gustavo Petro’s ‘total peace’ efforts and election campaign.” Nicolas Petro pushed back on this, saying the prosecutor had stated that the case has nothing to do with drug trafficking or the presidential campaign. (CNN)