For months, President Donald Trump has railed in opposition to Latin American narcoterrorists flooding the USA with “deadly poison.” He has used the scourge of drug trafficking as a rationale for dozens of navy strikes on alleged drug boats within the Caribbean and japanese Pacific Ocean, which have left greater than 140 folks useless.
Final month, Trump cheered a navy assault by U.S. forces that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores, and introduced them to the U.S. to face costs associated to cocaine trafficking. Maduro, Trump stated, led a “vicious cartel” that “flooded our nation with deadly poison answerable for the deaths of numerous Individuals.”
However on the subject of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was tried and convicted within the U.S. in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in jail for taking bribes and permitting traffickers to export greater than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S., Trump has taken a decidedly softer tone.
Hernández, he stated, has been “handled very harshly and unfairly” — so unfairly that on Dec. 1, Trump pardoned the previous president after he served lower than 4 of these 45 years.
However the federal authorities’s magnanimity didn’t finish there. On the day he was to be launched, data present, Hernández had an immigration detainer — a request for regulation enforcement companies to carry noncitizens for pickup by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — in place.
Right here, too, the Trump’s administration’s therapy of Hernández differed from its public aims. Different noncitizens caught up in current immigration sweeps — the overwhelming majority of whom do not need legal data — have confronted swift efforts to deport them, even to international locations the place they could face threats. However in Hernández’s case, the Federal Bureau of Prisons scrambled to get his detainer eliminated so he might stroll free.
And Hernández didn’t simply stroll out of the jail. Regardless of persistent price range and staffing shortages, jail officers paid a specialised tactical workforce extra time to drive Hernández from a high-security facility in West Virginia to the famed five-star Waldorf Astoria resort in New York Metropolis, in keeping with data and three folks accustomed to the state of affairs. Earlier than he left, Hernández was allowed to make use of the captain’s authorities cellphone to speak to the federal jail system’s deputy director, Joshua Smith, who was convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy earlier than Trump pardoned him in 2021.
“The [prisons bureau] administration rolled out the purple carpet for him,” stated Joe Rojas, a retired jail employee and former union chief who has been talking to the media on behalf of workers who worry reprisals for doing so since bureau leaders stopped recognizing the union final yr. “The workers are disgusted.”
Renato Stabile, the court-appointed lawyer representing Hernández — who has lengthy maintained his innocence — stated his consumer’s therapy was applicable.
“It will be significantly merciless to grant anyone a pardon and have them launched from jail — solely to have them instantly shipped again to a spot like Honduras the place they might’ve instantly arrested him or he would’ve been killed on sight by legal components that needed to do him hurt,” Stabile advised ProPublica. Via his lawyer, Hernández declined to remark.
ICE referred all inquiries to the White Home, which responded with a hyperlink to a November social media submit asserting the President’s intent to pardon Hernández. Smith didn’t reply to an emailed request for remark. A BOP spokesperson stated in an emailed assertion that the bureau doesn’t focus on circumstances of confinement or safety procedures and that worker requirements of conduct prohibit workers from giving any prisoners preferential therapy. “Violators could also be topic to disciplinary actions, together with removing from federal service and legal prosecution,” the assertion stated.
The investigation that in the end ensnared Hernández stretched throughout a number of U.S. presidencies. Regardless of looming authorized hassle stateside and widespread allegations of corruption in his nation, Hernández — typically identified by his initials, JOH — was seen as a key U.S. ally underneath the Obama and first Trump administrations, ostensibly due to his obvious willingness to assist sort out drug trafficking and migration points.
In 2012, as president of Honduras’ Nationwide Congress, he famously pushed by way of a authorized change permitting for the extradition of accused criminals to the U.S. — a reform that his lawyer identified was satirically later used to extradite him.
However in 2018, lower than midway by way of Hernández’s second time period as president, the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested his youthful brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernández, in Miami for a sequence of weapons and drug trafficking costs. A jury discovered him responsible the next yr at a Manhattan federal trial by which Emil Bove — the federal prosecutor who would later grow to be Trump’s private protection lawyer — gave a closing argument replete with allegations implicating the Honduran president in legal schemes. (Bove couldn’t be reached for remark.)
Though the sprawling legal case targeted on narcotrafficking issues, Juan Orlando Hernández’s political profession was fraught in different methods. Dana Frank, a College of California, Santa Cruz historical past professor who research Honduras, described him as a “repressive legal on a number of fronts.”
Whereas in congress in 2012, he led a “technical coup” in overthrowing the supreme court docket, she stated. Then, he ran for reelection to the presidency in 2017 “in full violation of the structure,” she stated. Amid the ensuing protests, safety forces shot and killed no less than 16 folks, together with two youngsters, amongst different human rights abuses, a United Nations report discovered. Hernández has stated little publicly, however his authorities advised the U.N. it might look into these circumstances. His get together has tweeted that it has an “unwavering dedication to democracy and freedom.”
Weeks after Hernández left workplace in 2022, he was arrested at his house in Honduras and extradited to the U.S. to face drug trafficking and weapons costs. Prosecutors stated he funded his political profession with thousands and thousands of {dollars} he acquired from “violent drug-trafficking organizations” in alternate for permitting them to “transfer mountains of cocaine” in a foreign country.
Stabile advised ProPublica the case in opposition to his consumer was all the time a weak one, relying closely on the phrase of unreliable drug traffickers with outlandish tales and little in the way in which of exhausting proof.
Nonetheless, the federal government’s case was sufficient to persuade a jury to convict Hernández after simply over eight hours of deliberations, and in June 2024 he was sentenced to 45 years in federal jail. Afterward, Stabile and his consumer started engaged on an enchantment, which at that time seemed to be Hernández’s solely shot at freedom.
Early final yr, jail officers transferred Hernández out of the federal detention heart in Brooklyn, which largely holds pretrial detainees, and despatched him to the high-security Hazelton penitentiary in West Virginia. Dubbed “Distress Mountain,” the notoriously violent jail is identical facility the place mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was crushed to dying in his cell hours after his arrival in 2018.
But jail sources stated Hernández appeared to do his time quietly, ultimately touchdown within the coveted housing unit put aside for a therapeutic program used to deal with drug habit, psychological sickness and “legal pondering errors.”
However after Trump returned to workplace final yr, a a lot faster path to freedom all of the sudden appeared potential: a pardon.
Like Trump, Hernández was a member of his nation’s right-wing get together. And, like Trump, he believed he’d been focused by leftist forces. He additionally had different causes to be hopeful.
Throughout his time in workplace, Hernández had championed the creation of particular financial zones that might set their very own taxes and laws, a transfer that benefitted the Trump-aligned Silicon Valley titans who invested in them, together with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. However the regulation was repealed by his successor, center-left get together Libre member Xiomara Castro, placing plans for the zones in jeopardy. (Andreessen responded to a request for remark with a hyperlink to a social media submit disavowing any involvement within the pardon. Thiel couldn’t be reached for remark, although he has beforehand stated he was not concerned both.)
Longtime political operative Roger Stone additionally recommended in a weblog submit co-authored with conservative activist Shane Trejo in January 2025 that pardoning Hernández might have political advantages for Trump. Within the submit, Trejo and Stone — who was pardoned by Trump 5 years in the past after he was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian election interference — urged the president to “crush socialism and save a freedom metropolis in Honduras” with a “well-timed pardon” that “could possibly be the ultimate dying blow to [Xiomara] Castro” within the 2025 elections.
Finally, Stone took on a extra direct position in advocating for clemency when he gave Trump a four-page letter Hernández had written to the U.S. president, asking for a pardon and making the case that his conviction was a “political persecution” by the Biden administration. In a textual content message with ProPublica, Stone stated he had acquired the letter from a journalist who’d gotten it from the household. He emphasised repeatedly that he was not compensated for his involvement.
“I learn the letter after which did my very own analysis and elected to ship the letter to President Trump,” Stone wrote. “I really had no contact with JOH or anybody in his household till after the pardon.”
On Nov. 28, two days earlier than the Honduran presidential election, Trump introduced his intent to pardon Hernández. Stabile stated he didn’t study the information till Ana García Carías, the previous president’s spouse, known as him in tears:
“He’s letting him out! Trump’s pardoning Juan Orlando!”
She despatched Stabile a screenshot from Fact Social, the place Trump had written that he would grant him a “Full and Full Pardon.”
The choice met with bipartisan backlash from lawmakers. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, known as the sudden reprieve “disgusting and incomprehensible,” whereas Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, described it as “horrible optics.”
In his submit, Trump additionally urged Hondurans to vote for the Nationwide Occasion candidate, Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who was trailing in a number of polls, including what to observers of Latin American politics was a thinly veiled menace: If Asfura didn’t win, Trump stated, the U.S. would “not be throwing good cash after dangerous” in assist of Honduras.
The message was apparent, consultants stated. “That pardon was a transparent inexperienced gentle for the Nationwide Occasion to govern the vote,” one former high-ranking U.S. diplomat advised ProPublica.
Ultimately, Asfura narrowly edged out center-right candidate Salvador Nasralla and handily defeated the incumbent Libre get together. However the rely was tormented by delays, stories of voter intimidation and allegations of fraud, and Nasralla later formally challenged the result.
On Dec. 1 — whereas the votes had been nonetheless being counted in Honduras — Trump posted once more on Fact Social in assist of Asfura. “Appears like Honduras is attempting to vary the outcomes of their Presidential Election. In the event that they do, there shall be hell to pay!” The previous president’s pardon formally went by way of that very same day.
That night at Hazelton, after the prisoners had already been fed dinner, corrections officers confirmed up on the housing unit to get Hernández. Smith, the bureau’s deputy director, needed to talk with him. The newly pardoned inmate was escorted to the captain’s workplace, the place he used the captain’s cellphone to speak to Smith, his fellow pardon recipient, in keeping with a supply accustomed to the state of affairs. The transfer shocked present and former jail workers.
Hernández was additionally allowed to speak along with his household, who then phoned Stabile and advised him the excellent news. Throughout the hour, Stabile stated, he obtained a name from Smith, inquiring a couple of launch plan.
“I’m in Manhattan and he’s in West Virginia,” Stabile advised Smith. “It will take me six hours to come back choose him up. Are you able to transport him?”
As a result of most inmate releases are finished throughout the daytime, jail workers needed to be known as again in to deal with the paperwork and logistics of liberating an inmate. However there was an issue: Hernández had an immigration maintain.
When noncitizens are convicted of crimes within the U.S., immigration officers routinely signal detainers asking prisons and jails to show them over to ICE for potential deportation proceedings following their launch date. In Hernández’s case, data present immigration brokers despatched the jail discover of a detainer in February 2025, two months after he was sentenced in court docket.
For a number of hours on the evening of his launch, jail officers scrambled to get the detainer eliminated so he might stroll free, in keeping with a number of sources accustomed to the state of affairs.
“It’s positively particular therapy. That’s not usually the way in which it goes,” stated Lena Graber, a senior workers lawyer on the Immigrant Authorized Useful resource Middle. “Most individuals with drug convictions would by no means get their ICE detainer eliminated simply because the conviction was pardoned.”
Data present immigration officers lifted the detainer on Hernández simply after 11 p.m.
Usually, in keeping with a supply accustomed to the state of affairs, prisoners who’re launched from Hazelton when there’s inclement climate or when it’s too late within the day to catch a aircraft or bus house are put up on the Microtel Inn and Suites on the backside of the hill. It’s a two-star resort the place a room prices $69 per evening. Within the morning, they’re given a ticket and despatched on their means.
However for Hernández, jail officers activated a four-man tactical workforce, paying no less than three of them extra time to drive him to the posh resort in Manhattan, in keeping with authorities data and regulation enforcement sources. A normal room there prices greater than $1,000 per evening. Stabile declined to touch upon the place Hernández stayed however stated the federal government didn’t pay for it.
It was one other transfer that shocked prisons bureau workers. One official known as it “completely fucking nuts,” including, “I don’t even assume that’s ever been finished, not only for a pardoned inmate however for anybody who’s been launched.” One other agreed that it was unprecedented: “Normally, they get a shitty bus experience or an inexpensive aircraft ticket. They don’t get the carpet rolled out for them.”
As of now, the previous president’s whereabouts are unknown. A couple of days after his launch, Hernández stated in Spanish in a social media submit that he had “no intention of returning to Honduras” instantly as a result of he and his household could be in “grave hazard given the evident persecution and the weaponization of justice in opposition to me.”
If Hernández is within the U.S., it’s unclear what his immigration standing is.
In the meantime, Honduran officers have issued a warrant for Hernández’s arrest over years-old fraud allegations and, in a social media submit, requested Interpol and different worldwide allies to honor it. However a regulation enforcement official accustomed to the state of affairs advised ProPublica there’s at the moment no pending Interpol purple discover asking for regulation enforcement to detain him. The one request the community acquired to concern such a discover, the official stated, was declined whereas Hernández was nonetheless in jail.
