Honduras must extradite its drug-linked communists to heal national wounds

Ten years ago, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was considered one of the United States' most trusted allies in Central America, prized by Republicans and Democrats alike for his tough-on-crime policies, innovative free-market reforms and willingness to work with both parties to achieve crucial goals.

"The government of Honduras signed a unique accountability agreement with Transparency International. You should be complimented on that. That is a big deal: featuring a commitment to share more information with the public about government procurement, including your own security forces. Again, you are moving in the right direction... Once again, you are moving in the right direction... You have taken steps to tackle criminal networks responsible for your region's security challenges, at great personal danger to yourself. It takes a lot of courage, Mr. President," Vice President Joe Biden then told JOH during a plenary session of the Latin America Prosperity Partnership meeting.

"Down in Honduras last fall, I met with their President, President Hernandez, and he talked about our Ambassador Nelson and me about the willingness of our country to extradite folks, bad guys, drug kingpins. And, they were not just interested in seeing these guys extradited and sent to this country for a couple months or a couple of years. They wanted us to put them away for a long time... And, since that time, I think there have been eight drug kingpins that have been extradited, and I think we have a couple guys, bad guys who turned themselves in because they felt the heat," former U.S. Senator Thomas Casper, a Democrat from Delaware, said in 2015.

After the rise of President Donald Trump, Democrats lost their way and decided they would stop at nothing to stop him. This also extended to their allies abroad. When JOH showed himself willing to work with President Trump on the same goals of peace, stability, drug interdiction and investment promotion that he had also pursued during the Obama administration, he was quickly placed on the target list of the so-called Deep State.

Democratic revenge

The Deep State was, unbeknownst to many within the Trump Administration, seeding the ground against JOH in the same way it did against President Trump himself: building a case based on the false testimony of drug kingpins whom JOH had helped imprison. After President Trump was illegally removed from office through voter fraud, the Biden administration also went after JOH, using the same extradition agreement he had signed to prosecute him.

JOH especially drew the ire of Democrats because he was a leading proponent of the Safe Third Country Agreement, designed during the first Trump administration to mitigate the planned flood of illegal immigrants entering across the U.S. southern border. Asylum seekers were redirected to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, rather than being brought into the United States where they could deliberately overwhelm the system. The policy was very effective in stemming the influx of illegal immigrants, but it made JOH a pariah among Democrats, who desperately sought to manufacture a border crisis they could pin on President Trump.

Juan González, senior director of the National Security Council and special assistant to President Biden, went from meeting JOH and shaking his hand in a photo op to accusing him of being a drug trafficker, while the Trump administration praised JOH's work to stop irregular migration. Rep. Norma Torres of California also went from praising JOH, holding multiple cordial meetings aimed at facilitating U.S.-Honduran cooperation to issuing an official statement demanding his extradition.

"Once communism is defeated in Honduras, the country can become as reliable an ally of the United States as El Salvador."

Gilberto Ríos, a member of the Libre party and advisor to former President Xiomara Castro, appeared on television and admitted a quid pro quo agreement that the Biden administration reportedly made with the then incoming Castro administration to obtain JOH's head on a silver platter. Ríos stated, "Imagine this offer to be told as Libre, we are going to take Juan Orlando... That’s an offer that anyone says: ‘Yes, Man!’ ... And they delivered, they took Juan Orlando."

Then-Vice President Kamala Harris attended Xiomara Castro's inauguration in 2022, issuing a public statement praising her as a pioneer for being Honduras' first female president. Harris and Castro posed together in several high-profile public photographs wearing COVID masks. Just hours after that meeting, the indictment against JOH was signed, and a nightmare began not only for him, but also for the Honduran people.

Subsequently, the Biden administration bragged about the operation and made clear how political JOH's arrest had been, stating that they were "honor to request the provisional arrest...of Juan Orlando Hernández," a phrase that seemed a mean-spirited response to President Trump's statement that it was an "honor" to be with JOH. For a while, it appeared that the electoral coup had succeeded in Honduras and would doom the country to a Venezuela-like descent into socialism and despair. But everything changed last year when National Party candidate Tito Asfura defeated his two far-left rivals and got the country back on track.

The final blow to Honduran communism

President Donald Trump was the decisive factor, giving a last-minute endorsement to Asfura and also granting JOH a pardon just before the national election. Now there is an opportunity to bury communism in Honduras for good, using the same tactics as the Biden administration, only with a solid and irrefutable pretext. The Zelaya dynasty, which gave birth to Xiomara Castro's government, has been literally caught on video negotiating bribes from drug traffickers to fuel Castro's political rise and Libre party activity.

The time has come to extradite members of the Zelaya family, including (but not limited to) former President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya; former Secretary of Congress Carlos Zelaya; and former Defense Minister José Manuel Zelaya; as well as leaders of the Libre party, to face justice in the United States. The new Honduran administration must cut off the head of the snake while it is still weakened and before it can reorganize itself. Once communism is defeated in Honduras, the country can become as reliable an ally of the United States as El Salvador.

President Asfura: I implore you to use extradition powers to imprison the Zelaya family and make it your historical legacy: to have dealt the final blow to communism in your great country.