I try not to get triggered by everyone single one of Trump's tweets, but this one broke me down. Let's delve a little deeper on what this supposed foreign aid to Honduras is/was.
Last November, Hondurans election authorities declared incumbent president President Juan Orlando as the winner of a heavily contested election. However, human rights groups assert that there are thousands of incidents of election fraud and voter intimidation. , where there were thousands of instances of massive fraud. People took to the streets and protested. Despite the evidence of massive fraud and violent repression by the state security forces, the United States continues to support this deeply anti-democratic government. A few days after the contested elections, the State Department issued a certification allowing Honduras to receive millions of dollars of U.S. aid. When we look into more detail, US aid to Honduras was $181m last year. The category of security, the justice sector, and violence prevention received more funding than any other, without including funding for borders and drug control. Most of the aid is channelled through the Department of State and US Agency for International Development, but there was also $47m via the Department of Defense last year, according to WOLA.
Recently, Orlando has deployed the TIGRES, special forces to crackdown on dissenters. TIGRES special forces were founded in 2013 to fight drug trafficking gangs, but they have been involved in theft and corruption involving drug trafficking. Despite these crimes, the U.S. continues to train and support the TIGRES. With the implicit and explicit blessing of the US, TIGRES have resurrected the “death squads” from the 1980s. As of today, more than 35 dissidents have been killed by TIGRES and hundred more have been detained. According to a Human Rights lawyer, Joaquín Mejía “Military forces acted as though they were in a war zone, in the sense that they continued with the rationale of firing live rounds at the people who were protesting – an unarmed population.” TIGRES continues to terrorize citizens of Honduras by firing tear gas everywhere and “disappearing many people” which reminds us of the U.S. backed death squads from the 1980s. In the 1980s, the CIA and the State Department decided to arm, fund and train notorious pro-America forces in Honduras. The "elite" Honduran forces were deployed to attack the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMNL in El Salvador, while committing brutal acts of torture within the USA.