Socialist President Threatens to Shut Down U.S. Base if Trump Deports Hondurans

Far-left President of Honduras Xiomara Castro on Wednesday threatened to shut down America’s military base in the country if President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration carries out mass deportations of Hondurans.

Castro issued her threats during her New Year speech, aired as a mandatory broadcast on Wednesday on national radio and television. The Honduran president warned that, should mass deportations of Hondurans occur, she would change her administration’s “collaboration” policy with the United States and, as a result, the American military base on Honduran territory would “lose its reason for existence.”

“Faced with a hostile attitude of massive expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change in our policies of cooperation with the U.S.,” Castro said, “especially in the military field in which, without paying a penny for decades, they [Americans] maintain military bases in our territory, which in this case would lose all reason to exist in Honduras.”

The United States has a military presence in Honduras through the Soto Cano Air Base, built in 1982 in the city of Comayagua. The base, which houses more than 500 U.S. military personnel and 500 Honduran and U.S. civilians, also serves as headquarters for Joint Task Force Bravo (JTF-Bravo).

Castro said she hopes President-elect Trump’s incoming administration will be open to “constructive and friendly” dialogue and not engaged in “unnecessary reprisals” against Honduran migrants.

{snip}

According to information from Honduran authorities cited by the Spanish news agency EFE, more than 1 million Hondurans, including both legal and illegal, currently live in the United States. An estimated 280,000 are on deportation lists.

{snip}