From Houston, Yilian David has intently followed the New York trial of the man she holds largely responsible for the deaths and disappearances of her fellow land-rights defenders along the Honduran coast.
Under Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, the Central American country was one of the largest drug corridors, the poorest country in Latin America, and the deadliest place in the world for environmental activists. On March 8, a jury found him guilty on drug trafficking charges, in which he allegedly promised to “ shove the drugs right up the nose of the gringos .”
For Hondurans who have had to flee the country, his trial provides a rare taste of justice, and proves that no one in their country — no matter how powerful — is above the law. From Houston, many of them celebrated the decision that they see as the first step in a long process to improve their country so that no one will have to migrate.
“So many years searching for justice in Honduras, and Juan Orlando was untouchable,” David said after hearing of the verdict. “I never imagined that I would see with my own eyes that he would be declared guilty.”
David is one of the many who left Honduras during his tenure and migrated to Houston, where the Honduran population more than doubled between 2010 and 2021, according to a Migration Policy Institute report. Harris County now has the largest Honduran population in the country .
In 2018, she fled threats for defending her ancestral land in Corozal, where her Afro-Honduran Garifuna community on the Honduran coast has fended off land grabs. The proximity to the coast and a major highway makes many Garifuna communities in Honduras prime real estate for mega tourism projects, as well as drug trafficking routes. Their organized resistance has made them targets of violence. At least 25 Garifuna leaders were assassinated between 2021 and 2023.
“If I were in Honduras all these years, they would have killed me,” said David. “I would have been part of the statistics.”
Now, David hopes the guilty verdict can help her country begin to heal from the damage inflicted under Hernández, who was extradited to the U.S. in 2022 just months after leaving office. She and many other Hondurans in Houston have tuned in to daily trial updates from Honduran reporters in New York.
They have followed for three weeks as drug traffickers, a former Honduran mayor, and DEA officials laid out how Hernández oversaw a conspiracy to traffic drugs with the help of his brother, Tony, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a 2019 trial .
His initials, JOH, dotted drug ledgers. He smiled next to known drug traffickers in photos. He received drug shipments at his own airstrip in his hometown , one witness testified. El Chapo financed his political campaigns, said another.
Since his brother was convicted, Hernández has tried to distance himself from the allegations. But the witnesses said the pair worked hand-in-hand. “Tony Hernández was the face of the drug trafficking operation and his brother JOH was in the shadows,” one witness testified .
Hernández denied the allegations when he took the stand on March 5 and 6. When pressed on specific photos and evidence, he said he did not remember. Hernández has repeatedly said that the allegations against him are nothing more than scorned drug traffickers angry at his tough-on-crime stance.
As David followed the updates, the details only confirmed her long-held suspicions about Hernández.
“We already knew, but we didn’t imagine that level to which Honduras was structured totally and solely for the drug trafficking of Juan Orlando and Tony,” David said.
How Honduras became a major drug trafficking corridor
The drug trade in Honduras predates Hernández’s presidency, but many see him as the leader who took the trade to new heights.
Juan Carlos Rodríguez, a Honduran community leader in Houston, fled gang recruitment in western Honduras in 2004. Since then, he has watched from afar as his country spiraled, and more friends and family have come to join him in Houston.
“There always existed drug trafficking, but not on such a large scale as when Juan Orlando arrived to the presidency,” Rodríguez said.
Rodríguez and many others point to a 2009 U.S.-supported coup that removed president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya from office as a turning point. Cocaine trafficking skyrocketed and Honduras became one of the most murderous countries in the world. Rodríguez was shocked when he returned to Honduras in 2010 and 2011 to find criminal structures more advanced and security forces more repressive.
“In that time, Juan Orlando was the president of Congress, and I saw the reality firsthand, and that the situation had gotten worse,” Rodríguez said.
Hernández and his National Party exploited the political turmoil to their benefit. Under his tenure, Hernández used state resources to protect his interests and shield drug traffickers and himself from investigation, according to prosecutors.
“Never before had we seen the Honduran State totally hijacked by these structures, that we now know were led by Juan Orlando Hernández,” said César Ramos, who works with the Mennonite Social Action Commission migrant support program in Honduras.
This meant that state coffers were drained through corruption, Ramos explained. The public education and health system nearly collapsed . When two hurricanes pelted the Honduran coast in 2020, crippled infrastructure only worsened the devastation. Turning to the police was not an option. They were often involved in the drug trade themselves.
Caro, 31, had her first child at a clinic in western Honduras in November 2020, when COVID had pushed an already strained and underfunded healthcare system to the brink of collapse. When her son developed neonatal pneumonia, the clinic had no equipment to hospitalize him. The hour-long journey to the nearest hospital was lengthened by the heavy rains from a Category 4 hurricane. Her baby died within days.
“I didn’t want to have another child in Honduras,” said Caro, who came to Houston in 2021 and asked to be identified by her first name because of her immigration status. “We didn’t trust the health system,” she added, placing partial blame on Hernández.
Kelia, 27, got used to hearing about friends and neighbors murdered near her house in the drug-trafficking hub of Colón . One of her brothers was shot in a case of mistaken identity. He miraculously survived. Her sister was robbed at gunpoint. Kelia, who came to Houston in 2019 because of the violence and trouble finding a job even with a college degree, blames Hernández for the country’s deterioration.
“Because he was making himself rich, he cared little about the people,” said Kelia, who is being identified by first name because of her pending asylum case.
Those who stood up to the “narco dictatorship,” as many call Hernández’s reign, risked deadly consequences. That’s why Garifuna and Indigenous movements like those led by slain environmental defender Berta Cáceres posed such a threat to the government.
“Watching the trial, you see that the government structure was focused on one thing: territorial control. To have the freedom to move drugs and the control of everything they did in the country, they found resistance from our people,” said David. “They saw how people like us thwarted their plans.”
Mass migration from Honduras was fueled by Hernández’s presidency, which focused resources on its own personal enrichment rather than the Honduran people, said Ramos.
“It is said that at least 800,000 people left in search of the American Dream because they didn’t see in Honduras the possibility of things getting better,” Ramos said. “Now that he is on trial, this confirms that we couldn’t expect anything from that government.”
U.S. tries a new approach
In 2014, around the time that Hernández rose from the president of Congress to the national presidency, a record number of Central American minors and families crossed the border.
The Obama administration tried to take a different approach to immigration at the southern border, by focusing on attacking the root causes in home countries rather than deterrence through harsh enforcement. The thinking was that migration was largely driven by push factors in Central America, and would not ebb until poverty, corruption and violence dissipated.
Honduras presented a particular conundrum in this strategy. Hernández was seen as a strong partner working to curb migration. He often met with U.S. leaders on their trips south, a point his defense mentioned in the trial.
But migration from Honduras only grew during his tenure. Asylum filings for Hondurans ballooned, with more than 150,000 Hondurans filing for asylum during Hernández’s eight years in office, compared to 10,000 in the previous 8 years. When thousands marched through Central America and Mexico in migrant caravans in 2018, the majority were Hondurans.
Rather than fighting corruption, the Hernández administration oversaw an “insulting draining of public funds,” said Joaquín Mejía, a human rights attorney and researcher at the Jesuit Reflection, Research and Communications Team.
The charges against Hernández , which date back to 2004, suggest that at least some parts of the U.S. government suspected his record was tainted. But the U.S. State Department largely supported him. In 2017, the U.S. legitimized Hernández’s reelection , which other international observers viewed as largely fraudulent because of both a constitutional bar on reelection and irregularities in the vote counting process.
“What happened with Juan Orlando Hernández and Honduras is a clear example that democracy is what matters least to the U.S.,” Mejía said. “Because if these democratic values interfere with their interests, their interests will always prevail.”
However, rumors of Hernández’s drug trafficking connections became more difficult to ignore after his brother’s 2019 conviction.
When elections came in November 2021, Hernández did not seek reelection, and his National Party of Honduras was ousted from power for the first time in 12 years. A campaign song for the opposing party’s candidate, Xiomara Castro, taunted Hernández that “the gringos are waiting for you” in New York. Within months, he was extradited to the U.S., sparking hopes of overdue justice.
Now that he has been declared guilty, Kelia, David, Caro and Rodríguez hope the verdict will start a slow process to improve their country enough to eventually return.
“What I want is for him to pay, because thanks to him, so many of us decided to leave our parents and flee our country, leaving behind so many beautiful things,” Kelia said. “We all want for our country to lift itself up and that one day we have a good leader. So that our country improves and no one has to migrate.”
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