Trump threats Honduras and Guatemala to cut aid over migrants

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to cut financial aid to Honduras and Guatemala over a large group of migrants heading towards the US border.

In a Tweet posted on Tuesday, President Trump said: "We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!"

The US sent more than $175m (£130m) to Honduras in 2016 and 2017, according to the US Agency for International Development.

After U.S. government's threats to withdraw aid from both countries and El Salvador the organizer of a migrant caravan from Honduras was detained on Tuesday in Guatemala.

According to organizers’ estimates, up to 3,000 migrants crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on a trek northward, after a standoff on Monday with police in riot gear.

The Honduran Foreign Ministry called on its citizens not to join the group. The government “urges the Hondurans taking part in this irregular mobilization not to be used by a movement that is clearly political,” it said.

Over the border, Guatemalan police officers detained Bartolo Fuentes, a former Honduran lawmaker, from the middle of the large crowd that he and three other organizers had led from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, since Saturday.

The Honduran security ministry said Fuentes had been detained because he “did not comply with Guatemalan immigration rules” and would be deported back to Honduras in the coming hours.

Security officials at the Honduran border with Guatemala in Agua Caliente blocked the road to prevent another much smaller group getting through, television images from the border showed.

Guatemala’s government said it did not have official figures for how many migrants from the caravan had already crossed the border.

Adult citizens of the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua need only present national identity cards to cross each others’ borders. That rule does not apply when they reach Mexico.