In the weeks before he took office, Donald J. Trump repeatedly promised to carry out the largest deportations in US history and to militarize the border, until his transition team declined demands from regional leaders to meet on the effects of his promised moves.
He has made countries like Mexico targets of his attacks, claiming migrants are flooding the United States with fentanyl and threatening to impose devastating tariffs. He also focused on Panama, repeatedly claiming that the country had allowed China to take control, forcing the United States to intervene and restore the Panama Canal.
How is Mr. Trump was inaugurated in Washington on Monday, the typical congratulations were accompanied by some Latin American leaders who sharply deviated from the usual diplomatic norms.
“There is no reason why Mexico should keep its head down or feel inferior to it. We are a great country, a cultural power,” said President Claudia Sheinbaum during the day’s morning news conference. “Our relationship with the United States will be equal.”
She also tried to appease unauthorized Mexicans living in the United States who could face deportation. “Mexicans are very important to the American economy and the Trump administration knows that,” Ms. Sheinbaum said. “To our countrymen and women: You are not alone and you must remain calm.”
Mexico is the country with the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the United States, with about four million Mexicans living there illegally since 2022according to the Pew Research Center.
Mexico’s foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, also said Monday that Mexico would not support an expected move to reinstate the policy known as Remain in Mexico, which during Trump’s first presidency forced migrants who applied for asylum to wait in Mexico until the timing of their hearings in immigration court. The policy was a boon for drug cartel members, who targeted asylum seekers to extort, kidnap and rape them, say human rights groups.
“Yes, they can do it; it is their right,” Mr. de la Fuente said of the United States. But while allowing that “some agreements” could be reached, he noted that Mexico has no legal obligation to process migrants’ asylum claims in the United States.
A few hours later, in a message on social networks, Mrs. Sheinbaum congratulated Mr. Trump. “As neighbors and trading partners, dialogue, respect and cooperation will always be a symbol of our relationship,” she wrote.
But during the marathon session of signing executive orders, Mr. On Monday, Trump said he would impose tariffs of 25 percent on Mexico and Canada on Feb. 1, accusing both countries, as they have in the past, of allowing undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States. Ms. Sheinbaum and some officials in her administration have already said Mexico would have to strike back to the United States with its own tariffs.
After Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, who warned earlier this month that she is ready to expel the American army from the country if Mr. Trump continued with mass deportations, she limited herself to sending a polite message welcoming him back to office.
But the country’s deputy foreign minister, Tony García, said in a phone interview Monday afternoon that his country and several of its neighbors do not plan to accept large numbers of flights carrying deportees without first negotiating the process with the new administration.
“They can’t be done unilaterally,” he said of the mass deportations.
Mr. García said that while there are currently no plans to end Honduras’ military agreement with the United States, which allows U.S. operations from a large military base, the Castro administration is still considering it as a potential option, so “we are being taken more seriously.”
The foreign ministers of several countries met last week to discuss their response to the incoming Trump administration in Mexico City, including Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela. According to Mr. García, the countries agreed that they would not “allow anyone to be deported by force. If the country says no one can enter, no plane can land.”
Honduras has an estimated 525,000 unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. Mr. García said he has received flights of more than half a million deportees from the United States in the past decade. He said the country plans to continue receiving such flights, but the two governments must first work out a plan.
“We are in favor of coordination,” he said. “Not subordination.”
His were some of the harshest words for the new president.
in Panama, the target of Mr. Trump’s recent criticismincluding his false claims that China controls the Panama Canal and that the United States should take it back, President José Raúl Mulino strongly rejected the president’s claims, which he repeated during his inaugural address.
“The canal is and will continue to belong to Panama, and its administration will continue to be under Panamanian control,” Mr. Mulino he said in a statement published on X.
However, later in the day, the Panamanian Comptroller’s Office announced that auditors had visited the provincial maritime authorities to begin an audit of the Panama Ports Company, a subsidiary of Hutchison Ports Holding. The company is the main port operator and main port concessionaire in the country. It is also part of CK Hutchison Holdings, a conglomerate based in Hong Kong.
“The purpose of this comprehensive audit is to ensure the efficient and transparent use of public resources,” the comptroller’s office said he said.
Mr. Trump inaugural speech — in which he said he would “reject a catastrophic invasion of our country” — often took aim at the region, as did many of the executive orders he signed Monday night.
But some leaders reaffirmed their intention to work with the new president and support his political goals.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who has close ties to Mr. Trump and his family, was invited to the inauguration but did not attend, Cindy Portal, a senior official at El Salvador’s foreign ministry, said in a radio interview. Instead, the country was represented by its ambassador to the United States.
Ms. Portal did not mention any plans to again refuse to deport Salvadorans, who also make up one of the largest groups of unauthorized immigrants in the country. El Salvador had 750,000 unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2022. Pew Research Center.
Instead, Ms. Portal emphasized the Bukele administration’s ties to both Mr. Trump’s son and Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, which was confirmed Monday night.
“The message we as the government of El Salvador are sending to Salvadorans is to wait and not overdo it,” she said. “President Trump has been clear about bringing back the bad guys who went out to destroy.”
She said they have nothing to fear if the Salvadorans have not committed a crime in the United States.
Countries in the region that have been economically isolated by US sanctions have had mixed responses to Mr Trump’s return to power and his raft of executive orders. Nicaragua’s government remained silent, while Venezuela’s interior minister wished Mr Trump “all the best”.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the “false labeling of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism”, in message on social networks. “The result of the extreme economic blockade measures imposed by Trump has been to cause shortages among our people and a significant increase in the migration flow from Cuba to the United States,” the statement said.
But on the other hand, countries that were close trading partners of the United States also saw their economies threatened. As of late Monday, Mexican leaders had yet to respond to Mr. Trump’s threat of tariffs. But Canada’s finance minister, Dominic LeBlanc, did.
“Our country is absolutely prepared to respond to any of these scenarios,” Mr. LeBlanc said. “We still believe that would be a mistake.”
They contributed to the report Simon Romero, James Wagner and Yubelka Mendoza from Mexico City; Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Toronto; Genevieve Glatsky from Bogotá, Colombia; Mary Triny Zea from Panama City; Labrador Gabriel from San Salvador; Jody Garcia from Guatemala City; and Joan Suazo from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
