Notorious Drug Trafficker Got Five-Star Treatment After Trump Pardon
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was given special treatment and provided with a room in a luxury hotel after Donald Trump pardoned him in December, ProPublica reported Wednesday.
Hernández, a member of Honduras’s right-wing National Party, was extradited to the U.S. in 2022 and sentenced to 45 years in prison on bribery and drug-trafficking charges two years later. Prosecutors said he enabled drug traffickers to “move mountains of cocaine” into the United States and used the millions of dollars in bribes he received for his political campaigns.
He cut a Trump-like figure in Honduras, attempting to overthrow the country’s Supreme Court in 2012 alongside a handful of other congressmen, in what was labeled a “technical coup” by local press. He was elected president in 2014, then reelected in 2017 amid accusations of electoral fraud.
His nationalist beliefs and lax economic policies—which Trump-aligned billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have benefited from—are perhaps why Trump moved to pardon Hernández.
After Hernández, a noncitizen, was released from prison, a request to hold him in place until immigration authorities could arrive was waived by federal authorities. A team of officials was then paid overtime to escort Hernández from Hazelton penitentiary in West Virginia six hours east, to the five-star Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Rooms at the Waldorf go for $956 a night, at minimum.
Usually, people released from Hazelton are given a “a shitty bus ride or a cheap plane ticket,” one prison official told ProPublica.
Hernández’s lavish treatment appears even more amoral when compared to how the Trump administration treats other noncitizens who are detained. Immigrants are usually deported as quickly as possible, regardless of whether they possess a criminal record.
Hernández’s current location is unknown, though he has said on social media he does not plan on returning to Honduras. Maybe he can get a Cabinet position.