A US citizen was captured in the north of Bogotá for his alleged participation in a case of sexual abuse against a minor, after several people alerted the authorities about a suspicious situation that occurred on the balcony of an apartment, however, President Gustavo Petro himself revealed that it could have been a misunderstanding.

According to the first reports in the Colombian media, the detainee was identified as Grant Gail, originally from Texas, United States, who was in the city while carrying out an adoption process for three minors.

The Colombian National Police reported that the intervention occurred after a citizen complaint and that specialized Children and Adolescents agents entered the property, where they located three minors aged 4, 7 and 15 years.

The suspect was placed at the disposal of the Attorney General's Office to respond, preliminarily, for the alleged crime of abusive sexual act with a minor under 14 years of age.

The Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) confirmed that the minors were placed under state protection while the investigations progress. In its statement, the entity specified that "the children are accompanied by a Family Ombudsman team that carries out the verification of rights and guarantees their protection," in addition to receiving specialized medical and psychosocial care.

After learning of the arrest, President Gustavo Petro requested to review the mechanisms for the entry of US citizens into Colombia and defended the country's sovereign power to set its immigration policies.

In a first publication on the social network

However, later, the president hinted that it could have been a confusion, "I must notify Colombian society because my commitment is to the truth, that the North American citizen of Texas origin, captured in an apartment in the north of Bogotá, apparently did not rape any of his children adopted in Colombia."

"I took him out to the balcony because he was stuck for eating the wrong food. The images deceived the Colombians who went en masse to defend the child. Now we have made boys and girls victims. If these indications of the facts are confirmed, justice must hand over all his rights as a human being to the American who apparently only wanted to adopt Colombian boys and girls at the ICBF through a private outsourcing for adoptions," he continued.

By admitting the possible error, he assures that the case leaves a “good lesson for those of us who can easily be collectively deceived by images that do not match reality and this is precisely what the entire Colombian society is experiencing, bombarded by companies with artificial intelligence…” he stated.

This episode occurs amid increased surveillance over possible cases of child sexual exploitation linked to foreign visitors. Official data from Migration Colombia indicate that during 2026, more than 60 non-admissions of foreigners have already been registered due to alleged risks related to sexual tourism, approaching the total recorded during all of 2025.