The judicial journey of the former president of Honduras, has taken an unexpected turn this Wednesday. Barely four months after , the former Honduran president has assured that the US justice system has formally “annulled” . According to Hernández, a resolution from the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of New York has ordered the case to be dismissed outright, calling it “inadmissible.”
“God is good! The truth always prevails and comes to light,” celebrated the former president (2014-2022) through his social networks. The announcement marks the end of what he always described as a “political revenge.” For JOH—as he is known in Honduras—the judicial decision is not only a physical freedom, but a “complete erasure” that reestablishes his innocence before the courts that previously identified him as the architect of a narco-state.
The fall of Hernández was, until recently, the most powerful symbol of the fight against impunity in Central America. His arrest was straight out of a movie. He was only able to enjoy 18 days as a free former president. After the handover to President Xiomara Castro at the end of January 2022, the politician was arrested at his home and the extradition process began, a hard blow for a man who defined himself as an unconditional ally of Washington.
The process against JOH was very controversial in Honduras. Apparently, he had collaborated in the fight against drug trafficking, but in reality so that the Police, the Army and the judges would look the other way while he did business with drug traffickers. During his mandate, Honduras received more than 50 million dollars from the US Administration to fight drug trafficking. The White House also authorized tens of millions of dollars for military aid and security in Honduras.
Trump’s pardon came despite multiple signs linking JOH to drug trafficking. by the same New York court for his ties to the Honduran drug cartels. When he was still in power, the Manhattan prosecutor’s office even accused Juan Orlando Hernández of receiving . Prosecutors gathered testimonies from other drug traffickers of the local cartel The Cachiros that revealed the activities of JOH as a fundamental piece of the drug cartel.
The court documents on which the conviction was based indicate: Hernández “was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.” , the prosecution maintained that “he abused his powerful positions and authority in Honduras to facilitate the importation of more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.” And he continues: “Hernández’s conspirators were armed with machine guns and destructive devices, which they used to protect their enormous shipments of cocaine while they transited through Honduras on their way to the United States, protect the money obtained from the eventual sale of this cocaine and protect their drug trafficking territory against rivals.” In June 2024, a New York jury sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House drastically altered the script. The pardon granted on December 1, 2025 — framed in the Honduran electoral campaign where — was the first step in this judicial thaw. Now, with the supposed annulment of the charges, the criminal record of the man who governed Honduras for eight years is, in practice, neutralized in the United States. It remains to be seen how justice will act in his country under the new conservative government of Asfura, very close to Trump, to whom he owes a large part of the election. Last December, the attorney general of the Central American country, , . “Comply,” stressed the official document, which warns Hernández that he will be arrested if he sets foot on Honduran territory. “Honduras has paid too high a price for drug trafficking: families destroyed, young people murdered, communities co-opted by organized crime and thousands of Hondurans forced to migrate, fleeing the violence generated by this scourge,” said Zelaya.
Honduras received the news of Hernández’s pardon divided. People voted massively in the 2022 elections against the National Party, Hernández’s organization, in a clear example of their exhaustion with corruption and what they called the “narco-state”, because Hernández’s critics claim that part of the power of his Government rested on pacts with drug traffickers. In the country, people’s discontent was increasing due to the corruption scandals during his mandate. One of the most notorious cases was the embezzlement from the social security institute of more than 200 million dollars. Journalistic investigations revealed that part of that money was used to finance the National Party’s electoral campaign.
“The pardon does not remove the accusations of drug trafficking, using the State for organized crime businesses and drug trafficking, the purchase of weapons. The pardon does not take away what he politically represented in state terms, in terms of privatization, repression, militarization,” Lucía Vijil, from the Center for Studies for Democracy (Cespad), a progressive organization that monitors power in Honduras, told this newspaper. “In the historical memory of this country, Hernández represents the negative, the business interests and organized crime,” he added. The first reactions to the decision of the American justice system began to echo on Wednesday night. “It is a slap in the face for Honduras, society and investigative journalism,” journalist Thelma Mejía wrote in X. “In addition to calling American justice into question. What a blow,” he lamented.
