Honduras

As of late April, roughly 60 non-Hondurans have been sent to Honduras under the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA). All U.S. removal flights to Honduras, including those transferring non-Hondurans subjected to the ACA, land in San Pedro Sula. 

These transfers began on October 10, 2025, when the United States sent seven Mexicans to Honduras. These individuals had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and asked to seek asylum. They were given a form by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials that stated that they would be sent to Honduras under the ACA and that they should tell an officer if they had a fear of persecution or torture in Honduras so as to receive a screening. Subsequent transfers to Honduras under the ACA include nine people from Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Guatemala in November 2025; nine people from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, and Nicaragua in December 2025; seven men from Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia in January 2026; seven people from Peru, Ecuador, and Guatemala in February 2026; ten people from Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Peru in March 2026 ; and nine people from Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua in April 2026. It is understood that only seven of the 60 individuals have remained in Honduras to seek asylum, while the others have returned to their countries of origin or migrated north. 

In addition, from October 2025 to March 2026, the U.S. government deported more than 90 Guatemalans to Honduras outside the parameters of the ACA. Honduran authorities bussed them the following day over the border to Guatemala without being screened or the opportunity to seek asylum in Honduras.

The March 2025 ACA between Honduras and the United States was made public on July 8, 2025 through a notice in the U.S. Federal Register. An ACA is an agreement where the United States bars asylum seekers from applying for U.S. asylum and sends them to a third country to apply for protection there. U.S. law governing “safe third country” agreements provides that asylum seekers cannot be sent to third countries for assessment of their asylum claims unless they would be safe from persecution and have access to full and fair asylum procedures. The current and former Trump administrations have repeatedly entered into ACAs – purportedly under the safe third country provision – with countries that do not meet these requirements, including an ACA with Honduras in 2019 during the first Trump administration (though no transfers were carried out through the 2019 ACA). 

The 2025 U.S.-Honduras agreement was amended in June to clarify that it will also apply retroactively to individuals who sought protection in the United States before the agreement went into force. The U.S. government has taken the position that the ACA could apply to any individuals who entered the United States on or after the effective date of a November 19, 2019 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) interim final rule that purported to authorize ACAs. 

To implement the ACA, the two governments adopted a Joint Implementation Action Plan, published in the Honduran federal register in late June 2025. Under this plan, Honduras committed to receive 10 third country nationals per month, up to 240 over two years. Initially, transfers would be limited to nationals of Latin American Spanish-speaking countries that do not require visas for entry, though Honduras reserved the discretion to exceed the cap or accept others. Because Honduras requires visas for Cubans and Venezuelans, individuals from those countries were excluded from the initial scope of the agreement. The plan also called for a center, Centro Integral para la Atención de los Solicitantes de Protección, to be managed by the Honduran Migration Institute with support from other agencies responsible for human rights, security, and child protection. This center would receive transferred individuals, process requests for protection, and manage voluntary returns. While the published agreement did not guarantee U.S. financial support, it left open the possibility of technical and financial assistance, with the United States stating that it “intends to cooperate” to strengthen the institutions “evaluating protection claims.”

Using this agreement, the United States has summarily cancelled (“pretermitted”) people’s pending asylum cases in U.S. immigration court without an opportunity to have their case considered. DHS has filed motions to pretermit people’s asylum cases in order to remove them to Honduras under the agreement, including in the cases of a gay man from Guatemala, a man from Bolivia fleeing harm for his participation in political protests, and a man from Nicaragua fleeing persecution for his anti-government political activity. These individuals, who are plaintiffs in U.S. federal litigation, U.T. v. Bondi, challenging the agreement (described below), all arrived in the United States prior to this year and as early as 2022. In their motions, DHS has argued that it is not required to give people an opportunity to express fear with respect to the third country, even though the possibility of removal there is being raised for the first time. In the case of another plaintiff, an immigration judge pretermitted—without a motion from DHS—the asylum case of a Somali asylum seeker subjected to female genital mutilation and forced marriage in Somalia, and ordered her removed pursuant to the Honduras ACA or in the alternative the ACA with Uganda. 

Many more cases have been pretermitted pursuant to the Honduras ACA than can be transferred to Honduras under the current agreement (in which Honduras committed to receive ten third country nationals per month). Data analysis by Mobile Pathways using publicly available government data indicates that there were almost 3,000 pretermissions of asylum claims of non-Hondurans with designations for removal to Honduras under the ACA between August 2025 and the end of February 2026. These pretermissions were for 14 Venezuelans, 345 Guatemalans, 159 Salvadorans, 761 Ecuadorans, 542 Colombians, 42 Bolivians, 33 people from the Dominican Republic, 433 Mexicans, 2 Uruguayans, 250 Peruvians, 384 Nicaraguans, 3 Argentinians, 3 Panamanians, 2 Cubans, 2 Costa Ricans, 2 Chileans, and 1 Paraguayan. 

U.T. v. Bondi began as a challenge to ACAs during the first Trump administration as U.T. v. Barr. The litigation challenges the legality of several aspects of the ACAs, including the 2019 interim final rule (ratified by DHS in 2025) purporting to authorize ACAs, DHS guidance implementing the ACAs, and designations finding that countries with which the United States has ACAs provide access to a “full and fair” asylum system.

The 2025 agreement between the United States and Honduras occurred within the broader context of the bilateral relationship. Remittances from Hondurans made up about 25 percent of Honduran gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024 and over 55,000 Honduran people have been deported from the United States since President Trump’s second term began in January, many of whom had lived in the United States for many years. Just days after Honduras agreed to retroactive application of the 2025 ACA, DHS first announced termination of Temporary Protected Status for people from Honduras. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 72,000 Honduran nationals terminated on September 8, 2025. The Trump administration exempted Honduras from new tariffs announced in August 2025, although tariff policy remains in flux. In regards to the November 2025 Honduran presidential elections, the Trump administration suggested it would cut off aid to Honduras if its preferred candidate—who supports the Trump administration’s economic and migration policies—did not win. After a weeks-long count, the Trump-backed presidential candidate was declared the winner, though it is not yet clear if and how this could impact the ACA. 

Honduras has a very limited asylum system, with roughly 232 refugees currently in the country and 436 people awaiting an asylum decision, although the number is growing. In 2025, the number of asylum claims quadrupled compared to those in 2024, placing increased strain on the system. According to Human Rights Watch, “Honduras continues to face longstanding structural challenges, including systemic corruption, political interference in the justice system, insecurity, a very large percentage of the population living in poverty, and lethal attacks against environmental defenders.” There are around 247,000 people who are registered as internally displaced, and the actual numbers are likely higher. Salvadorans and Guatemalans in Honduras likely face similar dangers to Hondurans given that the same criminal groups operate in all three countries, while Nicaraguan dissidents sent there could face violence or other forms of retaliation from the Nicaraguan regime.The Nicaraguan regime has carried out violent attacks, including assassinations, in neighboring countries such as Costa Rica. Same-sex marriages are banned by the Honduran constitution, and LGBTQ+ people face heightened discrimination and danger—in 2022, 43 LGBTQ+ people were murdered. Honduras has one of the highest femicide rates in the region, which is an underreported but critical driver of migration. In 2025, 36 Hondurans who were deported to Honduras were assassinated, raising security concerns for both deported Hondurans and third country nationals.