Honduras' president has threatened to force U.S. troops from bases they built in the Central American country decades ago if President-elect Donald J. Trump carries out a mass deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro, in a speech broadcast on television and radio on Wednesday, offered the first concrete pushback by a leader in the region against Mr. Trump's plan to deport millions of Latinos living in the United States. It became.
The threat came as Mr. Castro and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also convened a meeting of foreign ministers later this month to address the issue of deportations.
“Faced with the hostile attitude of mass expulsions of our compatriots, we will have to consider changing our policy of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military field,” Castro said.
“For decades, without paying a cent, they maintain military bases on our territory, and in this case they lose all reason to exist in Honduras,” she added.
Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reyna later said in a radio interview that Honduran leaders have the authority to suspend the decades-old agreement with the United States that allowed the construction and operation of Sotocano Air Base without Congressional approval. said. From there, America's largest military task force in Central America.
President Trump's transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
On Friday, Mr. Sheinbaum suggested that Mexico might accept deportees from other countries, a departure from his previous goal of reaching a deal with Mr. Trump to avoid accepting such migrants. It is an obvious change, but the administration reiterated that it does not agree with the public's acceptance. Deportation.
“We will ask the United States to allow us to bring non-Mexican migrants to their countries of origin to the extent possible. If not, we can work together through a variety of mechanisms,” Sheinbaum said. spoke.
“If these deportations are really going to happen, it will be time to talk to the US government,” she added. “But we're going to embrace them here. We're going to embrace them well and we have a plan.”
Trump promised to swiftly deport illegal immigrants when he took office, but his transition team has not shared any concrete plans, leaving Latin American governments to speculate as they prepare. Trump also vowed to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada unless they stop immigration and fentanyl from entering the United States.
Governments in the region rely on remittances from US immigrants. They account for as much as 25 percent of Honduras' economy. According to the Pew Research Center, it is estimated that more than 500,000 undocumented Hondurans (about 5% of the Honduran population) will be living in the United States by 2022.
Since the 1980s, American task forces have operated from Sotocano, a Honduran government-owned air base in Comayagua, a town about 80 miles from the capital Tegucigalpa. It was originally built by the United States in the 1980s to contain the communist threat in the region.
More than 1,000 U.S. military and civilians are currently in Soto Cano, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Bravo, the response force there, said Friday.
“We are guests of the Honduran government at the Honduran base,” said spokeswoman Col. Hilary Gibson.
Captain Gibson said the task force has played a role in counter-narcotics efforts, but has recently focused on managing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.
The U.S. Embassy in Honduras did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. troops also maintain a presence at bases in other countries in the region, including El Salvador, but these countries have fewer U.S. troops than in Soto Cano.
While many Hondurans praised Mr. Castro's comments, some elected officials sought to distance themselves from the president. Several members of Congress pointed to the need for dialogue with the Trump administration, pointing out that even removing U.S. troops from their bases will not stop Trump's mass deportations.
Foreign Minister Reyna said Thursday that Honduras intends to maintain good relations with the United States. But he stood by the president's comments, saying the country's leaders “have the right” to reconsider their relationship with the United States “if we end up with mass deportations that violate the rights of immigrants.”
Will Freeman, a Latin American studies fellow at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, said of the Honduran president's statement that he was “a little surprised by the audacity of it.”
He said that despite Mr. Castro's recent and openly confrontational approach toward the United States, including moves to abolish a long-standing extradition treaty, the United States remains its largest trading partner. He pointed out that it continues. Mr. Castro is also known to be on “friendly terms” with the U.S. ambassador behind closed doors, and is trying to elicit continued U.S. support, including humanitarian aid, for the migrant crisis, he said. Ta.
Freeman said it was also surprising that Castro would take this position before Trump took office, especially in light of comments from Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Trump's nominee for secretary of state. Ta.
Freeman said Rubio had warned that Honduras under Castro could become a “second Venezuela,” with the crisis deepening under Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian rule and mass It is said that immigration is occurring.
“I think it will worsen the relationship with the Trump administration, which was probably already souring,” Freeman said. “And I don't think these North and Central American countries are in a position to have much leverage with the United States on what immigration policy should look like.”
“Mexico today is a completely different story,” he added.
Most governments in Latin America, including Mexico, have sought to maintain good relations with Mr. Trump, even as they seek to emphasize the contributions of their citizens to the U.S. economy, regardless of their legal status.
This week, Ms. Sheinbaum reiterated: “We will continue to demonstrate how Mexicans in the United States contribute to the U.S. economy in very important ways. And if Mexicans were not in the United States, there would be no food on American tables. It would have been gone.”
Governments are also trying to reassure the American public that they are preparing for large-scale deportations. Mexico has created an online application to alert consular authorities if a citizen is in imminent danger of being detained.
The United States does not have full diplomatic relations with some countries in the region, such as Venezuela and Cuba, which face tough U.S. sanctions. As a result, these countries are unlikely to receive large numbers of deportation flights.
After Castro's speech, Honduras' foreign minister announced on social media that a meeting of the Honduran and Mexican leaders to discuss mass deportations would be held. The post also included a photo of Mr. Castro holding hands with Mr. Sheinbaum.
Emiliano Rodriguez Mega Contributed to the report.
