Honduras has threatened to expel United States troops, retaliating towards incoming President Donald Trump’s plans to hold out mass deportations of refugees and asylum seekers getting into the US from Central America.
Trump’s plan may have an effect on a whole lot of hundreds of individuals from Honduras, a rustic which hosts a major US navy base.
Right here’s what’s on the coronary heart of the dispute between the world’s greatest superpower and its smaller neighbour, why it issues and what this implies for ties between the international locations.
What has Honduras mentioned about US troops?
In her New 12 months’s message, Honduras’s President Xiomara Castro threatened to rethink the nation’s navy cooperation with the US if President-elect Donald Trump follows by way of on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Castro acknowledged that US navy services in Honduras, notably Soto Cano Airbase, would “lose all cause to exist” if these deportations occurred. However she additionally used the chance to criticise the longstanding US navy presence on Honduras soil extra broadly.
“Within the face of a hostile perspective of mass expulsion of our brothers, we must take into account a change in our cooperation insurance policies with america, particularly within the navy area, the place for many years, with out paying a cent, they keep navy bases on our territory, which on this case would lose all cause to exist in Honduras,” she mentioned in a Spanish assertion broadcast on nationwide tv.
How vital are US navy bases in Honduras?
The US navy presence in Honduras, whereas centered on Soto Cano Airbase, is a part of broader operations in Central America that embrace smaller bases in El Salvador.
Soto Cano, which grew to become operational within the Eighties to fight perceived communist threats within the area, hosts greater than 1,000 US navy and civilian personnel. Additionally it is one of many few areas able to touchdown massive planes between the US and Colombia, aside from Guantanamo.
The bottom serves as a key launching level for the speedy deployment of US forces within the area, together with for offering catastrophe reduction and administering assist, and for counter-narcotics operations.
Its location gives proximity to drug trafficking corridors in Central and South America, additionally making it a necessary staging floor for surveillance and interdiction.
Nonetheless, some specialists have criticised the US justification for its navy presence at Soto Cano after Washington supported the federal government of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was finally extradited to the US in 2022 for drug crimes and cash laundering.
Hernandez was twice president of Honduras and is serving a 45-year jail time period in New York since June 2024.
“The hypocrisy to say that they’re utilizing it [Soto Cano] to struggle drug trafficking when the US was shoring up, legitimating and pouring thousands and thousands of {dollars} into the president of Honduras and his corrupt police and navy,” Dana Frank, professor emerita of historical past on the College of California, Santa Cruz, advised Al Jazeera.
On the identical time, whereas the US doesn’t pay Honduras for the bottom, Soto Cano does serve advantages to the Central American nation, too.
“The US navy presence in Honduras is mostly fashionable, makes an financial contribution, and gives particular advantages to Honduras by way of infrastructure growth, intelligence, and emergency help in occasions of utmost climate which frequently impacts Honduras,” mentioned Eric Olson, world fellow on the Wilson Heart.
How vital is the risk – and why is Honduras making it?
Specialists say the risk from Honduras marks a major second in Central American geopolitics.
“I believe it is a actually fascinating and highly effective turning level within the function of the US which takes with no consideration that it’s going to dominate the Western Hemisphere, that it’s notably going to dominate Central America,” mentioned Frank.
Frank mentioned the US navy could also be notably inclined to maintain Soto Cano amid competitors with China, which doesn’t have a navy presence in Central America.
Honduras, too, wouldn’t need a rupture in ties with the US, say analysts. The nation depends on remittances from its abroad residents: 27 % of its gross home product got here from remittances in 2022. And its greatest diaspora is within the US, the place about 5 % of the Honduras inhabitants – greater than 500,000 individuals – dwell, per Pew Analysis Heart estimates.
Hondurans play a key function within the US economic system, notably in labour-intensive sectors. Within the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore in March 2024, one of many six building employees killed was a Honduran nationwide, whereas others have been immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
That exact same dynamic, nonetheless, makes it laborious for Honduras to remain silent within the face of threats of mass deportations. The nation’s Deputy International Minister Tony Garcia has mentioned about 250,000 Hondurans could possibly be expelled from the US in 2025, a quantity the Central American nation shouldn’t be geared up to abruptly host.
With out the remittances from its residents within the US, the economic system of Honduras may additionally take a significant hit.
How doubtless is Honduras to observe by way of?
Some analysts view the risk as a negotiating tactic quite than a right away coverage shift, and say that Honduras lacks leverage to affect US insurance policies meaningfully.
“Ultimately, I sense that Honduras is making threats with a really weak hand,” Olson advised Al Jazeera.
Frank described the transfer as a “preemptive strike” towards Trump and a major assertion of Honduran and Central American sovereignty.
Trump has pledged swift deportations of undocumented immigrants, however his workforce has supplied no concrete plans, leaving Latin American governments unsure as they attempt to put together.
He has additionally pledged to slap a 25-percent tariff on Mexico and Canada if they didn’t cease the circulation of migrants and fentanyl to the US.
How may the US reply – and what does this imply for bilateral ties?
Olson advised Al Jazeera that the risk could have broader implications for US-Honduras relations, notably underneath a Republican-led administration. The Honduran authorities, he mentioned, was “taking part in with hearth”.
“I can not think about that President Trump will take kindly to threats to the US navy by a authorities that Republicans already appear desperate to categorise with Nicaragua and Venezuela,” he mentioned, predicting that bilateral relations could also be “about to take a flip for the more serious” whatever the end result surrounding Soto Cano.
Olson mentioned that for the US, a possible rupture in navy relations with Honduras would doubtless be seen as disappointing however not essential to its navy operations.
To make certain, Soto Cano performed a key function within the Eighties within the US-backed Contra Struggle towards Nicaragua and supported operations in El Salvador.
“It has a protracted and nasty historical past,” Frank famous, together with its use throughout the 2009 navy coup in Honduras, when eliminated President Manuel Zelaya’s airplane refuelled there.
However Olson steered that Soto Cano Airbase not holds the strategic significance it did throughout the Eighties and Nineties.
“The US navy has been contemplating its withdrawal from Soto Cano for a while,” Olson mentioned, including that missions resembling counter-narcotics and emergency response could possibly be performed from different areas.
Frank additionally warned that Republicans, together with Marco Rubio, are more likely to body President Castro’s authorities as aligned with anti-US governments resembling these of Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“This may doubtless be spun right into a broader anti-communist Chilly Struggle framework,” she mentioned.
