Honduran leader threatens to pull US military out of base if Trump orders mass deportations

The president of Honduras has threatened to expel the US military from the base it built decades ago in the Central American country if President-elect Donald J. Trump carries out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants from the United States.

Honduran President Xiomar Castro’s response, in a televised and radio address Wednesday, was the first concrete resistance from leaders in the region to Trump’s plan to return millions of Latin American citizens living in the United States.

The threat came as foreign ministers were due to meet later this month to resolve the deportation issue.

“In the face of the hostile attitude of the mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change in our policy of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military arena,” Ms. Castro said of Honduras.

“Without paying a cent for decades,” she added, “they maintain military bases on our territory, which in this case would lose all reason to exist in Honduras.”

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Honduras, Enrique Reina, said afterwards in a radio interview that the leader of Honduras had the authority 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 from there the largest US military unit in Central America.

The move would pose serious risks for the small country, which depends on the United States as its largest trading partner and source of humanitarian aid.

Will Freeman, a fellow in Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said of the Honduran president’s statement: “I’m a little surprised at the boldness of it.”

A spokesman for Trump’s transition team, Brian Hughes, responding to Ms. Castro’s warning, said in a statement: “The Trump administration looks forward to engaging our Latin American partners to ensure that our southern border is secure and that illegal immigrants can return to their countries of origin.”

Mr. Trump promised to quickly deport undocumented immigrants 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. Mr. Trump also made a promise introduce a customs duty of 25 percent on Mexico and Canada if they do not stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States.

Most governments in Latin America, including Mexico, have worked to stay on good terms with Mr. Trump, although they sought to emphasize the contributions of their citizens to the American economy, regardless of their legal status.

This week, Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, reiterated: “We will continue to show how the Mexican people in the US contribute in a very important way to the American economy. And if Mexicans were not in the US, there would be no food on American tables.”

Governments also sought to convince their citizens in the United States that they were preparing for large-scale deportations. Honduras has said it will set up mobile consulates, and Mexico has created an online application for its citizens to notify consular authorities if they are in imminent danger of detention.

On Friday, in an apparent shift from her previous goal to reach a deal with Mr. Trump to avoid taking in such migrants, Ms. Sheinbaum also suggested that Mexico could accept deportees from other countries, though she reiterated that her administration does not agree with mass deportations.

“We will ask the United States that, to the extent possible, non-Mexican migrants can be taken to their countries of origin. And if not, we can cooperate through different mechanisms,” said Ms. Sheinbaum.

“There will be time to talk with the American government if these deportations do happen,” she added. “But we will receive them here; we will welcome them well and we have a plan.”

Governments in the region rely on remittances from immigrants from the United States. They make up 25 percent of the Honduran economy. More than half a million undocumented Hondurans — about 5 percent of the Honduran population — are estimated to live in the United States in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.

Since the 1980s, the US task force has operated out of Soto Can, an air base owned by the Honduran government in Comayagua, a city about 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa. It was originally built by the United States in the 1980s to help contain what was said to be a communist threat in the region.

Soto Cano is currently hosting more than a thousand US military and civilian personnel, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Bravo said on Friday.

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

While the task force has played a role in counter-narcotics efforts, Capt. Gibson said, it has recently focused on disaster relief and humanitarian aid.

The United States 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 they have fewer US troops than Soto Cano.

While many Hondurans celebrated Ms. Castro’s statements, some elected officials sought to distance themselves from the president. Several members of Congress stressed the need for dialogue with the Trump administration and pointed out that kicking the US military out of the base would not prevent Mr. Trump in carrying out mass deportations.

Mr. Reina, the foreign minister, said Thursday that Honduras intended to remain on good terms with the United States. But he stood by the president’s statements, saying that “if there are mass deportations that violate the rights of migrants,” the country’s leaders have a “right to review” their relationship with the United States.

Mr. Reina too announced on social media that the leaders of Honduras and Mexico have called a meeting of foreign ministers to discuss mass deportations. The post was accompanied by a photo of Ms. Castro holding hands with Ms. Sheinbaum.

Mr. Freeman, a fellow in Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Honduran government’s stance was a surprise because while Ms. Castro has recently taken what he has described as a publicly confrontational approach to the United States — including moving to the suburbs long-term extradition treaty — behind closed doors she was known to “play friendly” with the American ambassador, trying to elicit continued support from America.

He said it was also surprising that Ms. Castro sent such a warning before Mr. Trump took office, especially in light of the statements made by Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida.

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

“I think it will sour the relationship, which would already be sour, with the Trump administration,” Mr. Freeman. “And I don’t see that these northern Central American countries are in a position to influence the US on the form of migration policy.”

“Now Mexico,” he added, “is a completely 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 US sanctions. As a result, these countries are unlikely to accept large numbers of deportation flights.

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.