Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, walked out of a federal prison in West Virginia on Monday after receiving a pardon from United States President Donald Trump, according to official inmate records. His release came less than two years into a forty five year sentence for narcotics conspiracy and weapons offences.
The Trump pardon has immediately reshaped Honduran political debate and added new tension to an already razor thin presidential contest at home, where candidates are separated by only a few hundred votes. The move has also revived long standing questions about Hernández’s legacy and Washington’s approach to narcotics related cases involving foreign leaders.
Online records from the United States Bureau of Prisons showed that Hernández was no longer held at USP Hazelton, a high security facility in West Virginia. He had been incarcerated there after a New York jury found him guilty in March 2024 of conspiring to move cocaine into the United States and of possessing machine guns. A federal judge also ordered him to pay an eight million dollar fine.
Trump announced the pardon late last week, writing that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly”. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, he said the prosecution was a “Biden administration set up” and argued that United States authorities focused on him only because he was president of Honduras.
Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, thanked Trump in a social media post on Tuesday and said her husband had returned to his family as a free man.
Hernández governed Honduras from 2014 to 2022 and was a central figure in the country’s National Party. United States authorities extradited him in April 2022 after a grand jury charged him with coordinating a violent trafficking network that helped move hundreds of tonnes of cocaine through Central America.
Prosecutors told the court that Hernández accepted large payments from traffickers and used state institutions to shield them. During the trial, one prosecutor described Honduras under his leadership as a “narco state”, a characterisation that Hernández denied.
The United States Department of Justice said evidence included testimony from cooperating traffickers who described cash bribes, military grade weaponry, and protection for shipments to the United States. Reuters and the BBC both reported that prosecutors linked Hernández to some of the region’s most influential trafficking groups.
Read Also: Trump To Pardon Juan Hernández Over Drug Trafficking Case
The timing of the pardon has drawn sharp attention in Honduras, where officials are still counting ballots from a close presidential race. As of Monday afternoon, only 515 votes separated conservative candidate Nasry Asfura from Salvador Nasralla, a former television presenter standing for a centrist platform.
Trump criticised Nasralla on Friday, calling him “a borderline Communist” in a social media post. He praised Asfura for opposing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, with whom Trump has traded accusations in recent months. Nasralla has said he would end relations with Venezuela if elected.
Honduras is currently governed by President Xiomara Castro, who has developed closer ties with Cuba and Venezuela since taking office in 2022.
The Trump administration has described its Caribbean security presence as a response to narcotics trafficking, although analysts quoted by AFP and the BBC have noted that the military build up also increases pressure on left leaning governments in the region. United States officials have accused Maduro of leading a cartel, an allegation he denies.
Washington has also conducted sea based strikes against vessels it says are used for trafficking. Critics have questioned whether these actions risk escalating already strained relations with governments in Central America and the Caribbean.
