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Central America has dubbed 2025 the “year of gloom,” because of the war on immigrants launched by Trump
A few months before Donald Trump’s inauguration, a mass exodus of people from Central America began. Every day, according to unofficial statistics, between 3,000 and 4,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador (combined) emigrate in search of a «better life» in the United States. And it is these people who become the primary candidates for deportation.
«On my very first day [after the inauguration], I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to rid our country of criminals», Trump declared at a rally in Madison Square Garden. «I will save every city and town that has been seized and taken over, and we will throw these cruel and bloodthirsty criminals in jail and then throw them the hell out of our country as quickly as possible».
This threat primarily affects people from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and Nicaragua. In total, according to Tom Homan, the «Border Commissioner» and former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump’s first administration (now reappointed to the same position in Trump’s second administration), the campaign targets 1,445,549 citizens from 208 countries who are in the United States illegally.
According to a report by the pro-immigration American Immigration Council, deporting one million immigrants a year would cost $88 billion.
Trump promised to fight «migrant gangs» under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The so-called Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was enacted during wartime and gives the president the power to detain or deport natives and citizens of enemy states. It allows the president to target such immigrants without trial, based solely on their country of birth or citizenship.
If «enemy countries» in the American mind might include Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — whose governments Washington has been trying to overthrow for decades — there is no way to label Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador as such. Ironically, these are the countries that top the list of those sending the largest numbers of migrants, both legal and illegal, to the United States.
Honduras tops the list of countries whose citizens are subject to a U.S. deportation order — there are 261,651 Hondurans (about 5% of the country’s population). Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Tony García stated that some 150,000 Hondurans could be detained and expelled from the United States in the near future, a number that he said «exceeds the capacity of our country».
Guatemala ranks second with 253,413 undocumented migrants, Mexico third with 252,044, and El Salvador fourth with 203,822.
The domestic situation in Honduras is dire, and under these conditions, both legal and illegal migrants serve as a primary means of subsistence for many Honduran families, as well as a significant source of government revenue. In the United States, they are generally unskilled laborers employed in labor-intensive sectors such as agriculture and construction.
According to the Central Bank of Honduras (BCH), from January to December 2024 alone, the country received $8.8583 billion in remittances, 5.5% more than the same period in 2023.
Remittances account for about 25% of GDP, and in recent years have become one of the main sources of income for citizens. Data from the BCH show that more than 85% of families receiving these funds use them mainly to cover food, medical services and education, while 4% use them to buy or improve real estate. In Honduras itself, out of nearly 11 million people, more than 2.3 million face problems with full or partial employment. Approximately 145,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 29 are unemployed. No matter how much Tegucigalpa wants to, it simply cannot absorb hundreds of thousands of its returning citizens. The country lacks jobs, the health system is in shambles, and corruption and insecurity are chronic problems.
It is now clear why President Xiomara Castro’s nerves are frayed as we enter the new year of 2025. In a New Year’s address to the nation, Castro said, “Faced with a hostile attitude and the mass expulsion of our brothers, we must consider options to change our policy of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military field. They have maintained military bases on our territory for decades without paying a cent, so it doesn’t make sense to keep them in Honduras.
If newly inaugurated President Donald Trump carries out a massive deportation of undocumented immigrants, the Honduran president has threatened to «expel American troops from the military base» built decades ago.
President Xiomara Castro’s response marks the first concrete attempt by a regional leader to oppose Trump’s plan to send millions of Latin Americans living in the United States back to Latin America.
Marco Rubio, when he was a candidate for Secretary of State in Trump’s second administration, said he «did not expect such audacity» from Castro and accused her government of having ties to Venezuela and Nicaragua — countries hostile to America. Rubio warned that under Castro’s leadership, Honduras could become «the next Venezuela» in terms of mass migration of citizens. He conveniently failed to mention that the number of refugees from Venezuela is lower than not only Honduras, but also Guatemala and Mexico.
Incidentally, it was the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua that prompted the United States to establish the Soto Cano air base in Honduras as part of broader operations in Central America. Also known as Palmerola Air Base, it is located in the city of Comayagua, about 80 km from the capital, Tegucigalpa. It was originally opened in 1982 to deter the «communist threat» in the region. The Contras and death squads were trained there to fight rebels in Guatemala and El Salvador.
Today, Soto Cano is home to more than 1,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel, including Joint Task Force Bravo, whose presence is described by the U.S. Department of Defense as «temporary but indefinite».
It is also one of the few places where large aircraft traveling between the United States and Colombia can land. According to the U.S. Southern Command, the base serves as a key staging area for rapid deployment of U.S. forces in the region, including for disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, and counternarcotics operations.
Another small U.S. military base, known as CSL Comalapa (CSL stands for «Cooperative Security Location»), is located in El Salvador. It is operated by the U.S. Navy and supports the Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South), one of three task forces under the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).
Following President Xiomara Castro’s comments, Senator Mike Lee suggested that if Honduras decides to close the military base on its territory, it could be moved to Guatemala, which he called «more friendly to the United States».
Eric Olson, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (who has been declared undesirable in Russia by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office), told Al Jazeera that the Honduran government is «playing with fire». «I can’t imagine that President Trump will remain calm in the face of threats against US forces from a government that Republicans already seem ready to equate with Nicaragua and Venezuela», he said, predicting that bilateral relations could «deteriorate sharply» regardless of what happens with Soto Cano.
Since 2021, Palmerola has also functioned as an international airport, accepting commercial flights that previously landed at Tegucigalpa’s dangerous Toncontín airport, known for its short runways and long history of accidents. So when U.S. troops leave, Honduras will at least be left with a modern airport.
Governments across Latin America are trying to figure out how to respond to Donald Trump’s decision to carry out «the largest deportation operation in American history». The move has sparked a wave of disapproval from the governments of ten Latin American and Caribbean countries, who say the actions are incompatible with human rights. Several countries, including El Salvador, Panama and the Bahamas, have already refused to accept deportees from third countries.
Relations with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, which consider political migrants to be dissidents or traitors and therefore «undesirables», are also not good.
Recently, Mexico hosted a meeting called «Mobility of People on the Northern Route of the Continent», initiated by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Honduran President Xiomara Castro.
In a joint statement released on January 17, the foreign ministers of Brazil, Belize, Venezuela, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and El Salvador expressed their «grave concern» about the consequences of these deportations. They also pledged to «protect the human rights of all migrants» and «ensure their priority protection from transnational organized crime that profits from migration», while «rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle».
With her characteristic irony, Claudia Sheinbaum remarked, «We will continue to show how much Mexicans in the United States contribute to the American economy. And if there were no Mexicans in the U.S., there would be no food on American tables».
Thus, the transformation of America into a «MAGA-land» (MAGA: Make America Great Again), free of migrants, seems rather doubtful.