MEXICO CITY — Juan Orlando Hernández, a convicted drug trafficker who prosecutors say “paved a cocaine superhighway” to the United States, walked out of a West Virginia prison this week a free man.
That was thanks to President Trump, who on Monday granted a full pardon to Hernández, the former right-wing leader of Honduras who was serving a 45-year sentence for supporting what a U.S. attorney general had called “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
Trump's extraordinary pardon outraged many in Latin America and raised critical questions about his growing military campaign in the region, which the president insists is aimed at combating drug trafficking.
On Tuesday, Trump warned of imminent “ground attacks” in Venezuela, whose leftist leader Nicolás Maduro has been described as a “narco-dictator” by the White House, which appears determined to force him from power.
“If Trump is supposedly an anti-drug warrior, why did he pardon a convicted dealer?” said Dana Frank, professor emerita at UC Santa Cruz specializing in recent history of Honduras and Latin America. He described the drug war narrative adopted by the White House as little more than a pretext to advance US economic and political interests in the region and justify “a hemispheric attack on governments that do not follow what the United States wants.”
The United States has killed dozens of suspected low-level drug traffickers in missile attacks on ships in the Caribbean and Pacific and has massed 15,000 troops and a fleet of warships and fighter jets off the coast of Venezuela.
Venezuela, home to the world's largest known oil reserves, has been controlled by Maduro's leftist authoritarian government since 2013.
The White House has gone to great lengths this year to portray Maduro as a drug trafficking mastermind who leads a smuggling network known as the Cartel of the Suns, made up of high-ranking Venezuelan military officers. Last month, the government designated the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign terrorist group.
But security experts in Venezuela and law enforcement officials in the United States say the Cartel of the Suns, unlike those in Mexico, is not a well-organized drug smuggling organization. They say it's also unclear whether Maduro is directing illicit activities or simply looking the other way, perhaps in an attempt to generate loyalty while his generals enrich themselves. Maduro says the accusations are false and that the United States is trying to overthrow him to gain access to Venezuelan oil.
The evidence against Hernández, on the other hand, was much more conclusive.
Hernández was implicated in multiple drug trafficking cases brought by U.S. authorities, who accused him of helping traffic 400 tons of drugs through Honduras and accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Hernández, prosecutors said, used his military to protect traffickers and once boasted that he was going to “shove drugs under the noses of gringos” by flooding the United States with cocaine.
Hernández insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that his 2024 conviction was based on witness testimony (mostly convicted drug traffickers) that was not credible. The Trump administration cited those reasons this week in explaining the president's pardon.
Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, called the pardon an act of justice, writing on social media: “After almost four years of pain, waiting and difficult trials, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández IS BACK a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump.”
The pardon appears to be related to an effort by the Trump administration to influence the results of Honduras' recent presidential election.
Before Sunday's vote, Trump threatened on social media to withhold aid to Honduras if voters did not elect conservative candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the National Party, whose members include Hernández. Trump also harshly criticized the current Honduran president, the leftist Xiamora Castro.
Election results were still being counted Tuesday, but showed Asfura neck and neck with another conservative candidate, the Liberal Party, Salvador Nasralla. Castro was far behind.
Since returning to the White House this year, Trump has sought to exert dominance in Latin America like few presidents in recent history, striking deals with right-wing leaders like Argentina's Javier Millei and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele and punishing left-wing governments with tariffs and sanctions.
Trump and his officials have openly tried to influence other elections, supporting right-wing candidates in recent elections in Argentina and Peru.
“It's an intimidation of the democratic process,” Frank said. “It is an anguish for the sovereignty of these countries.”
At home, Trump has repeatedly intervened in the justice system with pardons.
His pardon for Hernandez comes amid a series of clemency moves by the president, whose pardon attorney, Ed Martin, has openly advocated for Justice Department investigations that would burden Trump's political enemies as well as leniency for his friends and allies. “No MAGA is left behind,” Martin wrote on social media in May.
Legal experts say the president's pardons and commutations appear to be aimed at people accused of abuses of power and white-collar crimes, the types of crimes Trump has been accused of throughout his adult life.
In recent weeks alone, the president has offered commutations to George Santos, a former congressman convicted of defrauding donors, and David Gentile, a private equity executive convicted of a $1.6 billion scheme that prosecutors say defrauded thousands of ordinary investors.
He also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a crypto finance executive with ties to the Trump family who pleaded guilty to money laundering, as well as Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, only to have his mother pardon him at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
The clemency actions have divided Trump's base of supporters, some of whom see the president as protecting conservative voices who faced political prosecutions under the Biden administration. Others still see Trump protecting his wealthy allies while much of the country faces an affordability crisis.
Linthicum reported from Mexico City and Wilner from Washington.
