Honduras and Trump's Narco Pardon
Overturning a narco conviction throws Washington's war on drugs on its head; I look at the lobbying behind it
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When I interviewed the then new president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández in 2014 for Time magazine, he was keen to get aid from Washington to fight cartels and gangs. The United States had a responsibility to pay, he argued, because it was American drug users funding the narcos wracking havoc in Latin America.
“I call for the principle of shared responsibility between those who produce [drugs] and those who consume them in the North,” Hernández, who was then 45, told me. “Never in Central America, particularly in the northern triangle and in Honduras has there been so much loss of life as in this decade. Never. Never in history. And look, disgracefully, this is a not an issue that originates in Honduras.”
This wave of violence was driven by both street gangs like the MS-13 and gangsters linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels, with gunmen shooting dead victims almost hourly in crime capital San Pedro Sula. For several years, the Central American nation of banana plantations and sweat shops was the most murderous country on the planet and drove a wave of teenage migrants northwards, many who got rounded up into the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas that year.
Hernández, a conservative who was one of 17 children from a coffee farming family, claimed he would restore order with an iron fist and there would be no need to flee. He indeed got aid, first from President Barack Obama and then Donald Trump in his first term.
While he nailed some narcos, however, U.S. prosecutors said Hernández took millions of dollars in bribes from others. During his eight years in power, traffickers kept using Honduras as a trampoline to bounce hundreds of tons cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico, from where they drove it in trap cars over the U.S. border. Honduran National Police themselves protected these loads, and Hernández boasted he would “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” U.S. prosecutors said. As it states in his 2022 indictment:
“HERNANDEZ received millions of dollars of drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere, and used those bribes to fuel his rise in Honduran politics. In turn, as HERNANDEZ rose to power in Honduras, he provided increased support and protection for his co-conspirators, allowing them to move mountains of cocaine, commit acts of violence and murder.”
The situation got worse after Hernández controversially (or arguably illegally) ran for a second term and was accused of stealing the 2017 election. When the opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was ahead by five points, the electoral tribunal halted the count for two days and then reopened it putting Hernández just in front; police shot dead various protesters, maybe dozens. Amid crime and poverty, record numbers fled Honduras in 2018, and Hondurans were at the heart of a new migrant crisis at the U.S. border.
Various sources pointed to Hernández’s corruption, including in a U.S. trial of his own brother, before Hernández left office and then U.S. prosecutors announced his indictment in 2022. When the leftist Xiomara Castro took power, Hernández lost protection and was flown to New York in handcuffs. A court convicted him in 2024, with evidence largely from witnesses, including questionable narcos, but earning a solid jury ruling, and the judge ignored the pleas of the defense to give him 45 years.
For journalists who have covered this as well as the U.S. agents who worked it, Trump’s announcement on Friday that he will pardon Hernández was a jaw-dropping moment.
“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump announced on Truth Social (his social media company).
In the message, Trump also said he backed candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who hails from Hernández’s same National Party, in Sunday’s elections. The votes are still being counted, but according to the official tally, Asfura is ahead of Nasralla, running on a centrist ticket, by just over a thousand votes, while the leftist candidate, is way behind with about 20 percent.
To release a president convicted of narco corruption, a conviction that took years of work by federal agents and tens of millions of dollars in costs, seems to go hard against…
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