Its president HondurasXiomara Castro, announced yesterday Wednesday that her government will consider the possibility of closing US military bases on the country’s territory if the president-elect Donald Trump he is making good on his threat to deport en masse citizens of the Central American state once he takes power.

In the face of the “hostile” attitude of Washington, which is preparing for a “massive deportation” of Honduran citizens, Tegucigalpa is obliged to consider the possibility of “changing our policies in terms of cooperation with the US, especially in the military field”, as Washington “has maintained military bases on our territory without paying a dime for decades,” Ms Castro said in a broadcast statement by the national radio and television.

“In that case,” the US military bases would “lose any reason to exist in Honduras,” added the president, who belongs to the Left.

Washington built the Palmerola base in Comayagua, in central Honduras, in the 1980s as part of its campaign to counter communist movements in Latin America amid the Cold War.

“We hope that the new American administration of President-elect Donald Trump will be open to dialogue, constructive and friendly, and that it will not engage in futile retaliation against our immigrants, who, as a general rule, make a significant contribution to the American economy,” Mrs. Castro added.

According to Honduran Undersecretary of State Tony Garcia, some 250,000 Honduran citizens are on a list of immigrants who may be deported from the US by 2025 – and the authorities are not ready to receive such a large number of people.

An estimated 2 million Honduran nationals live and work in the US, most of them undocumented; their remittances back home contribute more than 25% of the Central American country’s GDP.