Honduras pushes back to Trump's deportation plan, threatens to remove US military base

Honduras’s President Xiomara Castro warned that the country would push the US military out of its base if American President-elect Donald Trump carried out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants from the United States. The remarks from the Honduras leader came in a televised address on Wednesday.

The statement from Castro is being seen as the first concrete pushback to Trump’s plan in the region. The threat also came as foreign ministers of Latin American nations are set to meet 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 in her address.

“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.” Following her remarks, Honduras’s Foreign Minister Enrique Reina reiterated that the country had the power to suspend American military presence without any sort of approval, The New York Times reported.

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Trump’s team reacts

A spokesman for the Trump transition team, Brian Hughes, shared a statement responding to Castro’s warning. “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," he said. Under the agreement between the United States and Honduras, Washington was allowed to build the Soto Cano air base and operate America’s largest military task force in Central America from there.

Hence, the move would present a great risk for the Latin American nation since it depends heavily on the US as its largest trading partner and a source of humanitarian aid. Trump has promised to launch a deportation program for undocumented immigrants when he assumes office.

However, his transition team has not shared any concrete plans, leaving Latin American governments guessing even as they try to prepare. As of now most nations including Mexico have been working to stay on good footing with Trump, but they also emphasised the contribution their citizens have made to the American economy over the years.

“We will continue to demonstrate how the Mexican people in the U.S. contribute in a very important way to the US economy. And if Mexican people were not in the US, there would be no food on American tables," Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said.  Meanwhile, the governments have also sought to reassure their citizens in the United States that they are preparing for the influx.

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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.

The American base in Honduras

Since 1980, an American task force has operated out of Soto Cano, which is an air base owned by the Honduran government in Comayagua.

It was built by the United States in the 1980s to help contain what it said was the Communist threat in the region. The base currently hosts more than a thousand American military and civilian personnel.

“We are guests of the Honduran government on a Honduran base,” said the Spokeswoman of the Joint Task Force Bravo, Capt. Hillary Gibson. The US Embassy in Honduras is yet to respond to the matter.

With inputs from agencies.