President Donald Trump and his top advisers say drug cartels pose one of the most pressing risks to the United States and pledge to eradicate them from the Western Hemisphere.
As part of that effort, Trump indicated on Saturday that he would expand his push against cartels, saying in a social media post that the .
But less than 24 hours earlier, Trump had announced on social media that he would grant a full pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras convicted in the United States of drug trafficking, a decision seen as an important victory for authorities in a case involving a former head of state. The pardon has not yet been officially formalized.
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The two posts revealed a striking dissonance in the presidential strategy, combining the escalation of a military offensive against drug trafficking with the order to release a man who, according to prosecutors, received “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected his drugs with all the power of the State — Armed Forces, police and justice system”.
“We blow up ‘suspicious’ boats in the Caribbean, but pardon convicted drug traffickers in the US,” wrote Todd Robinson, former assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, in a LinkedIn post. “Someone help me understand this.”
In a statement, Trump said he granted the pardon because “many friends” asked him to do so, adding: “They gave him 45 years because he was the president of the country — this could happen to any president of any country.” (After leaving office, Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records, related to reimbursing hush payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels to hide a sex scandal during the 2016 campaign.)
In recent weeks, senior officials have made clear that the government is focused on tackling cartels in the Caribbean and South America.
“We are going to make sure the American people are safe and protected from transnational organized crime,” Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, told reporters earlier this month. “Venezuela is run by a narco-terrorist group that traffics drugs, weapons and people to the United States.”
Just over two hours after announcing Hernández’s pardon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted online: “We have just started killing narco-terrorists.”
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In recent months, the United States has been expanding its military presence in the Caribbean, part of a campaign that the government says is primarily focused on cutting the flow of drugs in the region. Since the beginning of September, the American military has carried out almost two dozen attacks against vessels that, according to the government, were transporting drugs to the United States, leaving more than 80 people dead. But the government has yet to provide detailed evidence of the allegations.
Trump has also been intensely pressuring Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, accusing him of running a network called the Cartel de los Soles — despite experts on crime and narcotics in Latin America saying it is not a real organization. Trump also authorized covert CIA operations in the country, and many American officials say privately that the goal is to remove Maduro from power.
The decision to pardon Hernández surprised authorities in Honduras and the United States. Prosecutors had asked the court to ensure that Hernández, 57, spends the rest of his life in prison, citing abuse of power, links to violent drug traffickers and “the immeasurable destruction” caused by cocaine. He received a 45-year sentence.
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Hernández’s family is trying to portray the conviction as political persecution, in an attempt to win Trump’s support. But much of the investigation took place during Trump’s first term, and one of the lead investigators on the case was Emil Bove III, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and later Trump’s personal lawyer. In his second term, Trump appointed Bove to a high-level position at the Justice Department before nominating him to the appeals court.
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