(Al Jazeera Media Network) Honduras has threatened to expel United States troops, retaliating against incoming President Donald Trump’s plans to carry out mass deportations of refugees and asylum seekers entering the US from Central America.
Trump’s plan could affect hundreds of thousands of people from Honduras, a country that hosts a significant US military base.
Here is what is at the heart of the dispute between the world’s biggest superpower and its smaller neighbour, why it matters, and what this means for ties between the countries.
In her new year’s message, Honduras President Xiomara Castro threatened to reconsider the country’s military cooperation with the US if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Castro stated that US military facilities in Honduras, particularly Soto Cano Airbase, would “lose all reason to exist” if these deportations occurred. But she also used the opportunity to criticize the longstanding US military presence on Honduras soil more broadly.
“In the face of a hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change in our cooperation policies with the United States, especially in the military field, where for decades, without paying a cent, they maintain military bases on our territory, which in this case would lose all reason to exist in Honduras,” she said in a Spanish statement broadcast on national television.
The US military presence in Honduras, while focused on Soto Cano Airbase, is part of broader operations in Central America that include smaller bases in El Salvador.
Soto Cano, which became operational in the 1980s to combat perceived communist threats in the region, hosts more than 1,000 US military and civilian personnel. It is one of the few locations capable of landing large planes between the US and Colombia, apart from Guantanamo in Cuba.
The base serves as a key launching point for the rapid deployment of US forces in the region, including for providing disaster relief and administering aid, and for counter-narcotics operations.
Its location provides proximity to drug trafficking corridors in Central and South America, also making it an essential staging ground for surveillance and interdiction.
However, some experts have criticized the US justification for its military presence at Soto Cano after Washington supported the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was eventually extradited to the US in 2022 for drug crimes and money laundering.
Hernandez was twice president of Honduras and is serving a 45-year jail term in New York since June 2024.
“The hypocrisy to say that they’re using it [Soto Cano] to fight drug trafficking when the US was shoring up, legitimating and pouring millions of dollars into the president of Honduras and his corrupt police and military,” Dana Frank, professor emerita of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Al Jazeera.
While the US does not pay Honduras for the base, Soto Cano does benefit the Central American nation.
“The US military presence in Honduras is generally popular, makes an economic contribution, and provides specific benefits to Honduras in terms of infrastructure development, intelligence, and emergency assistance in times of extreme weather which often impacts Honduras,” said Eric Olson, global fellow at the Wilson Center.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/5/why-is-honduras-threatening-to-expel-us-troops
