Honduran Leader Threatens to Kick US Troops Out of Base if Trump Orders More Deportations

The president of Honduras has threatened to expel US troops from the territory he built decades ago in the Central American country if President-elect Donald J. Trump deports large numbers of undocumented immigrants to the United States.

The response of President Xiomara Castro of Honduras, in his speech broadcast on television and radio on Wednesday, was the first to push the leader of this region through Mr. Trump to return millions of Latin American citizens living in the United States.

The threat happened when Ms. Castro and the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, have also called a meeting of foreign ministers at the end of this month to discuss the issue of deportations.

“Since we are faced with a hostile attitude towards the expulsion of many of our brothers, we will have to consider a change in our terms of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military arena,” Ms. Castro said.

He added: “Without paying a cent for decades, they maintain military bases in our area, which may lose the reason for being in Honduras.”

The Honduran foreign minister, Enrique Reina, said afterwards in a radio interview that the Honduran leader has the power to suspend without the consent of the country’s Congress the decades-old agreement with the United States that allows it to build the Soto Cano air base and operate it. The main American military force in Central America is from there.

This move will bring serious risks to this small country, which depends on the United States as a major trading partner and source of humanitarian aid.

Will Freeman, a Latin American fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said of the Honduran president’s statement: “I am amazed by your courage.”

A spokesman for Trump’s transition team, Brian Hughes, in response to Ms. Castro’s warning, said in a statement, “The Trump administration looks forward to engaging with our Latin American partners to ensure that our southern border is secured and illegal immigrants can be returned to their homes.” country of origin.”

Mr. Trump promised to quickly deport undocumented immigrants when he took office, but his transition team has yet to share any concrete plans, leaving Latin American governments guessing or scrambling to prepare. Mr. Trump also vowed to slap 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada if they don’t stop the flow of immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.

Many Latin American governments, including Mexico’s, have worked to stay on good terms with Mr.

This week, Ms. Sheinbaum also said: “We will continue to show how Mexicans in the US contribute in a very important way to the US economy. And if Mexicans were not in the US, there would be no food on American tables. “

Governments have also tried to reassure their citizens in the United States that they are preparing for any mass deportations. Honduras said it would set up mobile consulates, and Mexico launched an online request for its citizens to alert consular authorities if they are at risk of arrest.

On Friday, in an apparent shift from his previous goal of reaching an agreement with Mr. Trump to avoid receiving such migrants, Ms. Sheinbaum also suggested that Mexico may take in foreign deportees, as she reiterated that her administration does not agree. with the deportation of many people.

“We will ask the United States that, as much as possible, non-Mexico immigrants can be taken to their countries of origin. And if not, we can cooperate in different ways,” said Ms. Sheinbaum.

“There will be time to talk to the American government if this deportation really happens,” he added. “But here we will welcome them; We will welcome them, and we have a plan.”

Governments in the region rely on money from immigrants to the United States. They account for about 25 percent of the Honduran economy. More than half a million undocumented Hondurans — about 5 percent of the Honduran population — are estimated to be living in the United States by 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.

Since the 1980s, the American delegation has operated out of Soto Cano, an air base run 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 is currently hosting more than 1,000 US soldiers and civilians, a spokesman for the task force there, Joint Task Force Bravo, said on Friday.

“We are guests of the Honduran government in Honduran territory,” said the spokeswoman, Capt. Hillary Gibson.

Although the team has been involved in anti-narcotics efforts, Captain Gibson said, it has recently focused on disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.

The US embassy in Honduras did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US military maintains a presence at bases in other countries in the region, including El Salvador, although these have fewer US troops than Soto Cano.

While many Hondurans welcomed Ms. Castro’s statements, some elected officials sought to distance themselves from the president. Several members of Congress noted the need to negotiate with the Trump administration and pointed out that withdrawing the US military from the center would not stop Mr.

Mr. Reina, who is the foreign minister, said on Thursday that Honduras intends to live well with the United States. But he stood behind the president’s statement, saying that “if mass deportations that violate the rights of immigrants occur,” the country’s leaders “have the right to rethink” their relationship with the United States.

Mr. Freeman, who is a partner in Latin America in the studies of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the government’s position is surprising because although Mrs. Castro recently took up what he described as a public engagement with the United States – including walking away to end it. a long return agreement – behind closed doors he was known to “play friendly” with the American ambassador, trying to ask for continued American support.

He said it was also surprising that Ms. Castro will send such a warning before Mr. Trump took office, mainly because of the statement of Mr. Trump’s replacement for secretary of state is Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida.

Mr. Rubio had warned that Honduras under Ms. Castro’s government could become “the next Venezuela,” Mr. Freeman said, where the ongoing crisis under Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship has led to mass migration.

“I think it will hurt the relationship, which was already sour, with the Trump administration,” said Mr. Freeman. “And I don’t see that these northern and Central American countries are in a position to cooperate with the US on the state of migration policy.”

“Now Mexico,” he added, “is a completely different story.”

The United States does not have full diplomatic relations with other countries in the region, including Venezuela and Cuba, which have faced heavy US sanctions. As a result, these countries are less likely to receive large numbers of deportation flights.

After Ms. Castro’s speech, the minister of foreign affairs in Honduras announced on social media a meeting between the ministers of foreign affairs to discuss the issue of the expulsion of many people from the country, which he said was called by the leaders of Honduras and Mexico. This photo was accompanied by a photo of Ms. Castro wrestling with Mrs. Sheinbaum.

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega responsible reporting.