In Colombia, secretary of state visits with Venezuelan migrants -BYLN- By Marko Alvarez and Fernando Vergara Associated Press.

CUCUTA, Colombia -- 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 center 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 bridge separating the two countries.

The migrant center 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, 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."

A top Venezuelan official ridiculed Pompeo's visit.

"Confirmed: Washington and Bogota ratify Cucuta as the regular stage for their most decadent and cheap spectacles," Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said in a message on Twitter. "In the meantime, the abandoned people of Cucuta continue to live off the Venezuelan economy."

The United States has provided almost $275 million in aid to Colombia, Peru and other South American allies to absorb the flood of migrants from Venezuela.

When pressed by a reporter on whether the generosity shown Venezuelans fleeing Maduro is in conflict with the Trump administration's hostile policies toward migrants on the southern U.S. border, Pompeo called the comparison "ludicrous."