"Our job—where we can'is to provide Latin America with a choice," a U.K. government minister said on Thursday.

So Trump will likely get his way in more cases than not. But he shouldn’t celebrate just yet, because the short-term payoff of strong-arming Latin America will come at the long-term cost of accelerating the region’s shift toward China and increasing its instability. The latter tends, sooner or later, to boomerang back into the United States.

A simmering diplomatic stand-off over deportation flights spilled onto social media Sunday, threatening the once close relationship between the US and Colombia and further exposing the anxiety many feel in Latin America towards a second Trump presidency.