Honduras has threatened to expel United States troops, retaliating in opposition to 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 tons of of 1000’s of individuals from Honduras, a rustic which hosts a big US army 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 army cooperation with the US if President-elect Donald Trump follows via on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Castro acknowledged that US army amenities in Honduras, notably Soto Cano Airbase, would “lose all purpose to exist” if these deportations occurred. However she additionally used the chance to criticise the longstanding US army presence on Honduras soil extra broadly.
“Within the face of a hostile perspective of mass expulsion of our brothers, we must think about a change in our cooperation insurance policies with the US, particularly within the army area, the place for many years, with out paying a cent, they preserve army bases on our territory, which on this case would lose all purpose to exist in Honduras,” she mentioned in a Spanish assertion broadcast on nationwide tv.
How necessary are US army bases in Honduras?
The US army presence in Honduras, whereas centered on Soto Cano Airbase, is a part of broader operations in Central America that embody smaller bases in El Salvador.
Soto Cano, which turned operational within the Eighties to fight perceived communist threats within the area, hosts greater than 1,000 US army and civilian personnel. It’s also one of many few places able to touchdown massive planes between the US and Colombia, aside from Guantanamo.
The bottom serves as a key launching level for the fast deployment of US forces within the area, together with for offering catastrophe aid and administering help, and for counter-narcotics operations.
Its location offers 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 army presence at Soto Cano after Washington supported the federal government of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was ultimately 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 hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into the president of Honduras and his corrupt police and army,” Dana Frank, professor emerita of historical past on the College of California, Santa Cruz, instructed Al Jazeera.
On the similar time, whereas the US doesn’t pay Honduras for the bottom, Soto Cano does serve advantages to the Central American nation, too.
“The US army presence in Honduras is usually well-liked, makes an financial contribution, and offers particular advantages to Honduras when it comes to infrastructure improvement, intelligence, and emergency help in instances of utmost climate which regularly impacts Honduras,” mentioned Eric Olson, world fellow on the Wilson Middle.
How vital is the menace – and why is Honduras making it?
Specialists say the menace from Honduras marks a big 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 as a right that it’ll dominate the Western Hemisphere, that it’s notably going to dominate Central America,” mentioned Frank.
Frank mentioned the US army could also be notably inclined to maintain Soto Cano amid competitors with China, which doesn’t have a army presence in Central America.
Honduras, too, wouldn’t desire a rupture in ties with the US, say analysts. The nation depends on remittances from its abroad residents: 27 p.c of its gross home product got here from remittances in 2022. And its greatest diaspora is within the US, the place about 5 p.c of the Honduras inhabitants – greater than 500,000 individuals – reside, per Pew Analysis Middle 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 staff killed was a Honduran nationwide, whereas others have been immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
That exact same dynamic, nevertheless, makes it onerous 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 might be expelled from the US in 2025, a quantity the Central American nation just isn’t outfitted to immediately host.
With out the remittances from its residents within the US, the economic system of Honduras may additionally take a serious hit.
How possible is Honduras to observe via?
Some analysts view the menace as a negotiating tactic reasonably than a direct coverage shift, and say that Honduras lacks leverage to affect US insurance policies meaningfully.
“In the long run, I sense that Honduras is making threats with a really weak hand,” Olson instructed Al Jazeera.
Frank described the transfer as a “preemptive strike” in opposition to Trump and a big 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 move of migrants and fentanyl to the US.
How would possibly the US reply – and what does this imply for bilateral ties?
Olson instructed Al Jazeera that the menace might have broader implications for US-Honduras relations, notably beneath a Republican-led administration. The Honduran authorities, he mentioned, was “taking part in with fireplace”.
“I can’t think about that President Trump will take kindly to threats to the US army by a authorities that Republicans already appear desirous to categorise with Nicaragua and Venezuela,” he mentioned, predicting that bilateral relations could also be “about to take a flip for the more severe” whatever the consequence surrounding Soto Cano.
Olson mentioned that for the US, a possible rupture in army relations with Honduras would possible be seen as disappointing however not vital to its army operations.
To make certain, Soto Cano performed a key function within the Eighties within the US-backed Contra Warfare in opposition to Nicaragua and supported operations in El Salvador.
“It has an extended and nasty historical past,” Frank famous, together with its use in the course of the 2009 army coup in Honduras, when eliminated President Manuel Zelaya’s aircraft refuelled there.
However Olson urged that Soto Cano Airbase not holds the strategic significance it did in the course of the Eighties and Nineties.
“The US army has been contemplating its withdrawal from Soto Cano for a while,” Olson mentioned, including that missions equivalent to counter-narcotics and emergency response might be performed from different places.
Frank additionally warned that Republicans, together with Marco Rubio, are more likely to body President Castro’s authorities as aligned with anti-US governments equivalent to these of Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“It will possible be spun right into a broader anti-communist Chilly Warfare framework,” she mentioned.
