United States and Honduras signed Asylum Cooperative Agreement capped at 240 transfers

The United States and Honduras signed an Asylum Cooperative Agreement at Washington on March 10, 2025, amended by an exchange of diplomatic notes at Tegucigalpa that June to apply retroactively to people who sought protection before the agreement took effect. It entered into force June 25, 2025, and a Joint Implementation Plan signed that same month caps transfers at 10 individuals per month, no more than 240 over the agreement's first two-year period, limited to nationals of Spanish-speaking Latin American countries who do not need a visa to enter Honduras.

A Center for Gender and Refugee Studies fact-finding trip to Honduras in March 2026 found the country meets neither of the two conditions U.S. law requires for such an agreement — that transferred individuals be safe from persecution and have access to a full and fair asylum procedure — citing Honduras's entrenched, territorially-controlling criminal organizations. Researchers documented a Salvadoran man transferred under the ACA who was forced to flee Honduras after being pursued by the same gang he had originally escaped, and noted Nicaraguan asylum seekers face particular danger given the country's proximity to Nicaragua and a pattern of targeted killings there.