Honduras leader suggests ending cooperation with U.S. military over Trump deportation threat
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduran President Xiomara Castro’s threats to stop her country’s cooperation with the U.S. military if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on promised mass deportations have generated political heat at home, while the U.S. government has remained silent.
Castro said the U.S. had maintained a presence in Honduran territory for decades without paying a cent, and if Hondurans are expelled en masse, the reason for that presence would cease to exist. She said she hoped the Trump administration is open to dialogue.
“Faced with a hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change of our cooperation policies with the United States, especially in the military realm,” Castro said in a televised New Year’s Day speech.
It was the latest response in the region to early pronouncements from Trump. His threat to impose tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t do more to stop illegal migration and drug trafficking was met with a suggestion of retaliatory tariffs from that government. Trump criticized the charges imposed to transit the Panama Canal and suggested the U.S. could take it back, something Panama’s president emphatically rejected.
President-elect Donald Trump vowed to enact hefty new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration and drugs.
The main U.S. military presence in Honduras is at Soto Cano Air Base outside the capital. The U.S. has maintained a significant presence at the base since 1983, and it has become a key U.S. launching point for humanitarian and anti-drug missions in Central America. It is home to Joint Task Force Bravo, which the U.S. Defense Department has described as a “temporary but indefinite” presence.
Mexico’s president walks a fine line between pleasing her constituents and placating Trump.
The Pentagon declined to comment, and the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa did not respond to requests for comment.
Castro’s political opposition has denounced her remarks. Jorge Cálix, a probable presidential aspirant for the Liberal Party in Honduras’ Nov. 30 election, said Castro had put Honduras “in grave danger.”
Olban Valladares, a political analyst contemplating his own run for office for the Innovation and Unity Party, said that Honduras doesn’t “have the ability to threaten the United States in any way” and that the threat could make Honduran migrants even more of a target for the Trump administration.
González writes for the Associated Press.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
