Honduras' President Xiomara Castro threatened today to close US military bases in her country if US President-elect Donald Trump carries out his threat to deport Hondurans en masse after taking office, Agence France-Presse reported, quoted by BTA.
„Facing the hostility of mass expulsions“ Hondurans, “we must consider changing our policies of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military field, where they have maintained military bases on our territory without paying a cent for decades“, Castro told national radio and television.
“In this case (the military bases) would lose any reason to exist in Honduras“, the leftist president added.
In the 1980s, the United States built the “Palmerola“ base in Comayagua, in the central part of the country, to fight communist movements on the continent.
“We hope that the new US government of President-elect Donald Trump will be open to dialogue, constructive and friendly, that it will not take unnecessary retaliatory measures against our migrants, who, as a rule, make an important contribution to the US economy“, Castro noted.
According to Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Tony Garcia, about 250,000 Hondurans are on the list of people who could be deported from the US in 2025, and Honduras is not ready to accept such a number of people.
About 2 million Hondurans live in the US, most of them undocumented, and their remittances contribute to more than 25 percent of Honduras' GDP, AFP reported.