United States President Donald Trump announced a wave of executive orders that would greatly impact Latin America during his inauguration speech in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Salient among his comments was that the U.S. would be “taking back” the Panama Canal, a territorial threat he had already made in December and garnered regional backlash.

“The canal is and will remain Panamanian, and its administration will continue to be under Panamanian control, respecting its consistent neutrality. There is no presence of any nation in the world that interferes with our administration,” said Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino in a communiqué on Monday. 

He highlighted that control of the canal wasn’t “conceded” by anyone but the result of “generational struggles that culminated in 1999.”  Before that year, the U.S. had managed the 82-kilometer waterway connecting the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean since 1903, with Panamanian citizens protesting throughout the 20th century. Panama gained the power to administrate the canal in 1999 in accordance with the Torrijos-Carter treaties signed in 1977, which gradually phased out U.S. control.

In his inaugural speech and previous statements calling for U.S. control over the canal, Trump has consistently decried foreign interference by China specifically and characterized Panama’s sovereignty over the canal as a mistake.

“We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made, and Panama’s promise to us has been broken. China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back,” Trump said in the Rotunda, also claiming that U.S. companies were overcharged and unfairly treated.

However, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, the head administrator of the Panama Canal, told the Associated Press in an interview earlier this month that China did not control the canal’s operations and exceptions would entail “chaos.”

‘Unthinkable and unacceptable’

Latin American experts and former politicians condemned Trump’s intentions in the days leading up to the inauguration. The Latin American Reflection Roundtable, a network of noted international relations experts, published a damning communiqué signed by over 200 people, including former Panama President Martín Torrijos (son of General Omar Torrijos, for whom the treaties were named), ex-ministers, and academics. The seven-point statement revindicated the Torrijos-Carter Treaties and Panama’s successful administration of the canal.

“It would be unthinkable and unacceptable that threats and coercion could become new instruments of U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean,” read the document, which was signed by former Argentine Foreign Ministers Jorge Taiana and Felipe Solá. 

“It is irresponsible that, after the successful signing and fulfillment of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, President Donald Trump intends to place the Panama Canal in a geopolitical dispute with China or to use arguments that ignore Panama’s sovereignty over the Canal and its territory.”

The swath of decrees launching the second Trump presidency also fundamentally targeted the US immigration system in ways that will affect the region and Latin Americans in the country. They included mass deportations, crackdowns on the border, and the reinstatement of “Remain in Mexico” — a controversial policy from Trump’s first presidency mandating that immigrants trying to reach the US through Mexico must stay in that country.