Trump welcomes Honduras’s new president as US influence push widens

Donald Trump has met with Honduras’s newly sworn-in president, Nasry Asfura, casting the encounter as the start of a deepening alliance focused on drug trafficking and irregular migration.

Trump said the two met on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, just days after Asfura took office following a razor-thin election victory. In public remarks, Trump leaned into familiarity, describing Asfura, as a friend and political kindred spirit.

“Tito and I share many of the same America First Values,” Trump said, using Asfura’s nickname. He also reminded followers that he had openly backed Asfura during the campaign, even threatening to cut US aid to Honduras if he lost. “Once I gave him my strong Endorsement, he won his Election!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

After the meeting, Trump praised what he described as a close security partnership between Washington and Tegucigalpa, saying the two governments would work together to “counter dangerous Cartels and Drug Traffickers, and deporting Illegal Migrants and Gang Members out of the United States”.

Asfura is expected to address Honduran media on Sunday, outlining what was discussed, the tone of the talks and any potential outcomes, according to Honduras’s El Heraldo newspaper.

The Mar-a-Lago meeting comes less than a month after Asfura met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on January 12. That visit ended with both countries announcing plans to pursue a free trade deal, signalling a rapid warming of ties with Washington under Honduras’s new leadership.

Asfura’s ascent gives Trump another conservative partner in Latin America, at a moment when electoral shifts in countries such as Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina have weakened the region’s left-leaning governments.

The relationship has not been without controversy. Just before the Honduran election, Trump pardoned former president Juan Orlando Hernández, a member of Asfura’s party who had been serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US on drug trafficking charges. The move was widely interpreted as political signalling.