US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Venezuelan migrants in Colombia on Sunday as he wrapped up a four-nation tour of South America aimed at pressuring Venezuela's socialist president, Nicolas Maduro.
Pompeo went to a migrant centre in the border town of Cucuta with Colombian President Ivan Duque. Not far away, Venezuelan security forces with riot gear stood in the middle of the Simon Bolivar international bridge separating the two countries.
The migrant centre has been the first stop for some 3.4 million Venezuelans who have fled hyperinflation, severe shortages of food and medicine, and political upheaval in their homeland.
Pompeo described a "very moving" encounter with a Venezuelan mother named Geraldine who crossed into Colombia and was torn about abandoning her country even as she had to scavenge for diapers, medicine and other basic goods she could no longer find in Venezuela.
Mimicking President Ronald Reagan's famous "Tear down this wall" speech in Berlin at the end of the Cold War, Pompeo urged Maduro to lift a military blockade preventing the entry of tons of humanitarian aid that has sat for months on Venezuela's borders with Colombia, Brazil and the Dutch Caribbean.
"Mr. Maduro, open these bridges, open these borders. You can end this today," Pompeo said. "I hope you will care now when you see the horror, when you see the tragedy, to change your ways and to leave your country."
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