Honduras

‘She got ripped away from me,’ army soldier Matthew Blank said after his wife Annie Ramos was detained in LouisianaImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under the command of the Trump administration have reportedly detained the wife of a US army staff sergeant at his military base in Louisiana amid his preparations to deploy.The arrest of Annie Ramos, 22, took place last Thursday, just days after she married 23-year-old Matthew Blank, a soldier who has served for more than five years and previously deployed to the Middle East and Europe, the New York Times first reported on Sunday. Continue reading...

Reform UK leader was paid to make remarks about imprisoned rapper and ex-Honduran president in Cameo videosNewly unearthed Nigel Farage videos reveal support for rioter, neo-Nazi event and far-right slogansNigel Farage called for the release of the imprisoned rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs and commended the efforts to free a former Honduran president jailed in the US for drug trafficking.The Reform UK leader was paid to make the remarks on the personalised video platform Cameo, which allows users to commission celebrities and public figures to record short video clips. Continue reading...

Oscar, Ana and their children fled violence for safety in the US. Now Oscar, afraid and alone, is back in Honduras – ‘at the mercy of God and his will’ As soon as Oscar’s deportation flight landed at the La Lima airport in Honduras, he put on his baseball cap. On the airport shuttle toward the terminal, he pulled his cap even lower – trying to obscure his face at various police checkpoints.His parents picked him up in a car, and drove him to a lodging they had arranged for him – miles away from his family home. He has hardly stepped outside since. “Because I can’t trust anyone – not the authorities, not the government, not a police officer,” he said. He has visited his mother a handful of times since the US deported him three weeks ago, and only under the cover of night. “They will kill anyone here. There is death everywhere.” Continue reading...

Family-run farms in El Salvador and Honduras face mounting losses, rising costs – and the need to adapt or be left behindRead more of our Coffee crisis series hereOn a steep hillside in western El Salvador, Oscar Leiva watches rainfall in December, a month that once marked the start of the dry season. During this harvest cycle, flowering came early and then stalled. A heatwave followed. What remains of the crop is uneven, lower in quality and more expensive to produce than the last.For Leiva and his family, coffee has never been just a crop. His mother, Esperanza Marinero, remembers when the rains arrived on schedule and the harvest could be planned months in advance. Today, the calendar no longer holds. Decisions about pruning, fertilising and hiring labour feel like educated guesses. Each mistake carries a cost the family cannot afford. Continue reading...

In Miami, president calls for regional cooperation to counter Chinese economic and political interestsDonald Trump changed the channel from Iran to the western hemisphere on Saturday, convening a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club to discuss regional interests and establishing what he called a “counter-cartel coalition”.“Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate Isis, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels,” he told 12 regional leaders gathered at what the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit. Continue reading...

Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries for environmentalists – and the release of Juan Orlando Hernández has reinforced its ‘crisis of impunity’, say criticsWhen Donald Trump announced that he would pardon the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, only the second world leader to be convicted of drug trafficking, Anna*, an environmental defender, was shocked.In 2022, Hernández, also known as JOH, was extradited to the US and later convicted, along with his brother, on drug trafficking and weapons charges. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US, becoming the first Honduran head of state to be tried and sentenced abroad for running a narco state. He was also accused of grave human rights violations. Continue reading...

Mother whose visa application was pending says she will send girl back to US soon accompanied by another relativeFive-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos misses her cousins, classmates and kindergarten teachers in Austin, Texas. Despite being a US citizen, she was deported on 11 January alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos, to Honduras, a country Génesis had never known.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were acting on an administrative deportation order against Gutiérrez, 26, issued in 2019, before Génesis was born. Continue reading...

Lawyer for administration had apologized earlier for violating court order and admitted ‘mistake’A US federal judge in Boston on Friday gave the Trump administration three weeks to “rectify the mistake” it made by deporting a college student to Honduras while she was traveling home to visit her family for Thanksgiving as he recommended it issue her a student visa.The US district judge, Richard Stearns, imposed the deadline after a lawyer for the administration earlier this week apologized for having violated a court order that should have prevented 19-year-old Any Lucia López Belloza from being sent to Honduras. She is a Honduran national who was brought to the United States by her mother when she was eight while seeking asylum. Continue reading...