Government officials in Honduras said President Donald Trump's actions this week to seal the southern border, deport illegal immigrants, and slash funding for foreign aid could lead the Central American nation to cozy up to China.
Honduras Foreign Minister Enrique Reina on Wednesday said that although the U.S. provides his country with important help, his nation had increasingly been approaching other countries, including China, The New York Times reported Friday.
Honduras' reaction is unlike other Central American nations that have been distancing themselves from China to reassure Trump.
In the past week, Panama President Jose Raul Mulino reaffirmed that China was not controlling the Panama Canal, as Trump claimed, the Times reported. And Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government would reduce its reliance on certain Chinese products by shifting their production to Mexico.
Tony Garcia, Honduras' deputy foreign minister, said the nation had been focused on "expanding our international relations" even before Trump's election, the Times reported, and that Reina's comments did not reflect a shift in foreign policy.
"We do not plan to distance ourselves from the United States," he said.
Garcia said Honduras is willing to be more outspoken than other Latin American countries to protect Hondurans in the U.S. in the face of Trump's vow of mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
"We have been very vocal as a country and I'm proud of that," he said. "Others have been super soft, while others have landed in the middle."
Honduran officials have said a trade agreement is in the works with China; the countries signed a pact worth the equivalent of $276 million last spring to build educational infrastructure in Honduras.
Earlier this year, Honduras President Xiomara Castro warned she could expel the U.S. military from a large air base near Comayagua where it has operated since 1983 if the Trump administration conducted the deportations, according to the Times. Garcia said his government is using that as a "point of pressure" and a way to make the Trump administration "take us more seriously."
Garcia said Castro's government did not want to jeopardize relations with the U.S., which he called an important partner, and that it would keep accepting deportation flights from the U.S, according to the Times. Since 2015, Honduras has been receiving about 10 U.S. deportation flights a week, he said.
The Honduran government has said that about 200,000 Hondurans are in the U.S. illegally and could face deportation, according to the Times. The Pew Research Center placed the number at 525,000 in 2022, making Honduras the fifth-largest country of origin for migrants in the U.S., after Mexico, El Salvador, India and Guatemala.
Garcia said Honduras hopes to be able to discuss deportation plans with the Trump administration, according to the Times.
"We need to sit down and listen to their concerns, and they need to listen to ours," Garcia said. "Our concern is that we can't absorb so many people at once because it would be a collapse, a social problem."
Newsmax reached out to the State Department for comment.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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