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Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug-trafficking operation that moved hundreds of tonnes of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump, officials confirmed Tuesday.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate website showed that Hernández was released from U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton in West Virginia on Monday, and a spokesperson for the bureau on Tuesday confirmed his release.
His wife, Ana García, thanked Trump for pardoning Hernández via the social platform X early Tuesday.
“After almost four years of pain, of waiting and difficult challenges, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” García’s post said.
She included a picture of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons listing for Hernández indicating his release.
Trump was asked Sunday why he pardoned Hernández by reporters travelling with him on Air Force One.
“I was asked by Honduras — many of the people of Honduras,” Trump said. “The people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing.”
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Hernández’s lawyer, Renato Stabile, said in an emailed statement he could not share the former president’s current location. He added that Hernández is glad the “ordeal” is over.
“On behalf of President Hernández and his family I would like to thank President Trump for correcting this injustice,” Stabile said.
Hernández was arrested at the request of the United States in February 2022, weeks after Honduras’s current president, Xiomara Castro, took office.
Two years later, Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in a New York federal courtroom for taking bribes from drug traffickers so they could safely move some 360 tonnes of cocaine north through Honduras to the United States.
At the start of his trial in February 2024, a U.S. prosecutor said Hernández had even boasted at a meeting with drug dealers that “together they were going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
Hernández maintained throughout that he was innocent and the victim of revenge by drug traffickers he had helped extradite to the United States.
Trump suggested in his comments in recent days that Hernández was somehow the victim of a “setup” from prosecutors in the U.S. Justice Department during Joe Biden’s administration, but the jury took less than two days to unanimously convict the former president.
During his sentencing, federal Judge P. Kevin Castel said the punishment should serve as a warning to “well educated, well dressed” individuals who gain power and think their status insulates them from justice when they do wrong.
Hernández portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking movement who teamed up with American authorities under three U.S. presidential administrations to reduce drug imports.
But the judge said trial evidence proved the opposite and that Hernández employed “considerable acting skills” to make it seem that he strongly opposed drug trafficking while he deployed his nation’s police and military to protect the drug trade.
The ex-president’s brother had been convicted at an earlier trial for distributing 165 tonnes of cocaine and ordered to forfeit $138.5 million US in proceeds for illegal drug trafficking.
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The move angered Democrats in Washington as Trump has used the alleged flow of drugs to the U.S. as the legal underpinning justifying a series of strikes on vessels near Venezuela and in the eastern Pacific, which have killed more than 80 people since Sept. 2.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine called Trump’s decision to pardon Hernández “shocking.”
“He was the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises that has ever been subject to a conviction in U.S. courts, and less than one year into his sentence, President Trump is pardoning him, suggesting that President Trump cares nothing about narco-trafficking,” Kaine said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
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Republican reaction was mixed, with Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin telling CNN he trusted Trump’s judgment on the matter, while Florida congressmember Maria Elvira Salazar, usually a staunch Trump defender, told the same network she “would not have done that.”
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, was more emphatic in his criticism on X.
“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro for running drugs into the United States? Lock up every drug runner! Don’t understand why he is being pardoned,” Cassidy posted on the weekend.
Hernández is not guaranteed a quick return to Honduras.
Immediately after Trump announced his intention to pardon Hernández, Honduras Attorney General Johel Zelaya said via X that his office was obligated to seek justice and put an end to impunity.
He did not specify what charges Hernández could face in Honduras. There were various corruption-related investigations of his administration across two terms in office that did not lead to charges against him. President Castro, who oversaw Hernández’s arrest and extradition to the U.S., will remain in office until January.
The pardon promised by Trump came days before Honduras’s presidential election, injecting a new element into the contest. Trump endorsed the National Party’s Nasry Asfura last week.
The vote count proceeded on Tuesday.
