By Annie Correal
Honduras’ president threatened to push the U.S. military out of a base it built decades ago in the Central American country should President-elect Donald Trump carry out mass deportations of immigrants living illegally in the United States.
The response by President Xiomara Castro of Honduras, in an address broadcast on television and radio last Wednesday, was the first concrete pushback by a leader in the region to Trump’s plan to send back millions of Latin American citizens living in the United States.
The threat came as Castro and Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, also called a meeting of foreign ministers later this month to address the deportation issue.
“Faced with a hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change in our policies of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military arena,” Castro said.
“Without paying a cent for decades,” she added, “they maintain military bases in our territory, which in this case would lose all reason to exist in Honduras.”
Honduras’ foreign minister, Enrique Reina, said afterward in a radio interview that Honduras’ leader had the power to suspend without the approval of the country’s Congress a decades-old agreement with the United States that allowed it to build the Soto Cano air base and operate America’s largest military task force in Central America from there.
The move would present grave risks for the small country, which depends on the United States as its largest trading partner and a source of humanitarian aid.
Will Freeman, a fellow in Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said of the Honduran president’s statement: “I’m surprised a bit by the boldness of it.”
A spokesperson for the Trump transition team, Brian Hughes, responding to Castro’s warning, said in a statement: “The Trump administration looks forward to engaging our Latin American partners to ensure our southern border is secure and illegal immigrants can be returned to their country of origin.”
Trump promised to swiftly deport those living in the country without legal permission when he took office, but his transition team has not shared any concrete plans, leaving Latin American governments guessing even as they try to prepare. Trump also vowed to slap a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada if they did not stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl to the United States.
Most governments in Latin America, including Mexico’s, have worked to stay on a good footing with Trump, even as they have sought to emphasize the contributions their citizens make to the American economy, whatever their legal status.
This week, Sheinbaum reiterated: “We will continue to demonstrate how the Mexican people in the U.S. contribute in a very important way to the U.S. economy. And if Mexican people were not in the U.S., there would be no food on American tables.”
The governments have also sought to reassure their citizens in the United States that they are preparing for any large-scale expulsions. Honduras has said it will establish mobile consulates, and Mexico created an online application for its citizens to alert consulate authorities if they are at imminent risk of being detained.
On Friday, in an apparent shift from her previous goal to reach a deal with Trump to avoid receiving such migrants, Sheinbaum also suggested that Mexico might take in deportees from other countries, even as she reiterated that her administration did not agree with mass deportations.
“We are going to ask the United States that, as far as possible, migrants who are not from Mexico can be taken to their countries of origin. And if not, we can collaborate through different mechanisms,” Sheinbaum said.
“There will be a time to talk with the U.S. government if these deportations really occur,” she added. “But here we are going to receive them; we are going to receive them well, and we have a plan.”
Governments in the region rely on remittances from immigrants in the United States. They account for as much as 25% of Honduras’ economy. More than 500,000 Hondurans — about 5% of the Honduran population — were estimated to be living illegally in the United States in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
Since the 1980s, a U.S. task force has operated out of Soto Cano, an air base owned by the Honduran government in Comayagua, a town about 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa. It was originally built by the United States in the 1980s to help contain the communist threat in the region.
Soto Cano hosts more than 1,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel, a spokesperson for the task force there, Joint Task Force Bravo, said Friday.
“We are guests of the Honduran government on a Honduran base,” said the spokesperson, Capt. Hillary Gibson.
While the task force has played a role in counternarcotics efforts, Gibson said, it has recently focused on disaster relief and administering humanitarian aid.
The U.S. Embassy in Honduras did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. military maintains a presence at bases in other countries in the region, including in El Salvador, though these have fewer U.S. military troops than Soto Cano.
While many Hondurans celebrated Castro’s statements, some elected officials sought to distance themselves from the president. Several members of Congress noted the need for dialogue with the Trump administration and pointed out that pushing out the U.S. military from the base would not stop Trump from carrying out mass deportations.
Reina said Thursday that Honduras intended to stay on good terms with the United States. But he stood behind the president’s statements, saying that “if mass deportations that violate the rights of migrants come about,” the country’s leaders had “a right to rethink” the relationship with the United States.
Freeman said the government’s posture came as a surprise because while Castro had recently taken what he described as a publicly confrontational approach to the United States — including moving to end a long-standing extradition treaty — behind closed doors she had been known to “play friendly” with the U.S. ambassador, trying to elicit America’s continued support.
He said it was also surprising that Castro would send such a warning before Trump assumed office, particularly in light of statements from Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida.
Rubio had warned that Honduras under Castro’s government could become “the next Venezuela,” Freeman said, where a spiraling crisis under the authoritarian rule of Nicolás Maduro has led to mass migration.
“I think it will sour the relationship, which would have already been sour, with the Trump administration,” Freeman said. “And I don’t see these northern Central American countries are in a position to leverage much with the U.S. over the shape of migration policy.
“Now Mexico,” he added, “is a totally different story.”
The United States does not have full diplomatic relations with some countries in the region, including Venezuela and Cuba, which have faced harsh U.S. sanctions. As a result, these countries are unlikely to accept large numbers of deportation flights.
After Castro’s address, Honduras’ foreign minister announced on social media the meeting between foreign ministers to discuss mass deportations, which he said had been called by the leaders of Honduras and Mexico. The post was accompanied by a photo of Castro holding hands with Sheinbaum.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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