source: Nacla
An Absurd New Chapter in the “War on Drugs”
Extrajudicial executions of Latin American fishermen and the pardon of a former Honduran President and cocaine kingpin reveal the deadly contradictions of the U.S. "War on Drugs."
On December 1, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) walked out of a U.S. prison, pardoned by President Trump. He had served merely 18-months of a 45-year sentence after being found guilty on cocaine trafficking and related weapons charges in March 2024.
The same week that Trump pardoned JOH, Congress grilled Trump administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, regarding the U.S. military strikes on small boats off the coast of Venezuela. U.S. military actions have now killed at least 87 people in 23 strikes since September 2. Trump claims these extrajudicial executions are necessary actions to protect American lives in the “War on Drugs.” Yet, his administration is simultaneously cutting funding for proven approaches to ameliorate the overdose crisis in the United States, ostensibly their rationale for boat strikes, and pardoning JOH—who, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig, “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States.”
The so-called “War on Drugs,” in its many incarnations, has never been effective at reducing the drug trade. This is in part because U.S. administrations have long partnered with leaders deeply involved with the trade itself as long as they had the right politics—a practice that continues today. But the Trump administration’s stewardship of the newest chapter of the “War on Drugs” has reached levels of hypocrisy hitherto unattained. Will it be enough to prompt a reckoning with the historical and ongoing absurdity of U.S. counternarcotics policies in Latin America?
The Non-Partisan Case Against JOH
When announcing the JOH pardon, President Trump claimed the conviction was a result of a Biden administration “set up.” In reality, both Democratic administrations of Obama and Biden, and the first Trump administration maintained close relations with JOH, despite clear evidence of his involvement in the cocaine trade. Frequent increases of aid to the country with the explicit goal of reducing drug-trafficking and out-migration toward the United States accompanied celebratory photos of handshakes between JOH and U.S. officials.
JOH was the second member of his immediate family to face extradition and trial in U.S. courts. His brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former Congressman for the National Party, was extradited in 2019 and given a life sentence for cocaine trafficking and related weapons charges in 2021. According to his indictment, Tony was “a large-scale drug trafficker” collaborating with traffickers from Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico, “to import cocaine into the United States.” The indictment describes Tony soliciting bribes for the National Party, coordinating police protection for cocaine shipments, and serving as a crucial go-between for political and narco-elites.
One of the key prosecutors for the cases against Tony Hernández and JOH was Emil Bove III, a former personal attorney of President Trump and his recent choice for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals judge. Bove worked on several high-profile Honduran narco-related cases dating back to 2015, which continued throughout the first Trump administration.
The process of convicting JOH, which was widely celebrated throughout Honduras, also provoked a wave of murders of traffickers, lawyers, and public figures.
According to the Justice Department, as head of Congress and then a two-term President, JOH was “at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” His political career was bolstered by his illicit wealth; reports during his trial revealed he received at least $1.4 million in campaign funding from the Sinaloa Cartel for his 2013 presidential campaign. In turn, JOH facilitated the “importation of over 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.”
The process of convicting JOH, which was widely celebrated throughout Honduras, also provoked a wave of murders of traffickers, lawyers, and public figures.
In addition to the testimony of several former Honduran and Mexican traffickers, as well as former narco-politicians, another key source of evidence in the trial against JOH were the ‘narcolibretas,’ ledgers maintained by former trafficker Nery Orlando López Sanabria. Shortly after the narcolibretas were used in the trial of Tony Hernandez, López Sanabria was murdered in a maximum security prison. López Sanabria’s defense attorney was also killed less than a month after his client. López Sanabria’s wife and money laundering accomplice, Erika Bandy, along with her security guards, were gunned down by men in police jackets in San Pedro Sula shortly after her release from prison. Before her grisly murder, Bandy gave an interview to InSight Crime on her knowledge of ties between Honduran political officials, including JOH and Tony Hernández, and her late husband.
The defense for JOH tried to claim that all the witnesses against him were non-credible violent criminals. Yet, the consistency of their testimonies, accompanied by the written ledgers mentioning “JOH,” and video evidence, suggest otherwise.
U.S. prosecutors also noted that while JOH “had every opportunity to affect positive change for his country,” he governed in ways that undermined Hondurans’ well-being, especially the poor and those in marginalized areas. Some traffickers invest in their communities, but JOH did not. Despite all their narco-revenue, JOH and his National Party confederates robbed hundreds of millions dollars from the Honduran Institute for Social Security (IHSS), bankrupting the country’s healthcare system and leading to at least 3,000 deaths.
The Violence of U.S. “Counternarcotics”
The Trump administration’s violent campaign against suspected narco-trafficking vessels in Latin America has now killed over 80 people in more than 20 strikes since September 2. As congressional hearings on the September 2 attacks were ongoing, the U.S. conducted another lethal strike in the Pacific, killing four.
These strikes have provoked international and domestic outrage, drawing bipartisan criticism and ongoing Congressional investigations. Both Hegseth and Trump have staunchly defended the strikes and on numerous occasions called the victims “narco-terrorists.” Yet, evidence suggests the victims have included innocent fishermen. A former top prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) has also said the attacks are crimes against humanity.
This is not the first time the U.S. has supported or engaged in violent “counternarcotics” strikes against civilians with impunity. In 2001, a U.S. policy of blowing up suspected drug flights in the Andes in order to disrupt cocaine production networks between Peru and Colombia resulted in CIA operatives killing an American missionary and her infant daughter in Peru. A 2012 attack by DEA agents alongside Honduran military operatives killed four innocent civilians, including two pregnant women and a child, and injured many others traveling on a passenger boat in the remote village of Ahuas.
This is not the first time the U.S. has supported or engaged in violent “counternarcotics” strikes against civilians with impunity.
Rather than learning from past mistakes, the current administration is drastically escalating them. Trump and top administration officials have repeatedly suggested the current strikes will deter drug-trafficking into the United States, though his logic is deeply flawed. Supply-side strategies of drug control and interdiction policies have long been ineffective, even according to the government’s own data.
Most contemporary overdose deaths in the United States are related to fentanyl—a synthetic opioid that is not produced nor trafficked near Venezuela, where U.S. strikes have focused—and in which U.S. pharmaceutical companies have played a big role in driving addiction. If they are even moving narcotics, boats leaving from Venezuela are more likely carrying cocaine destined for European markets. Yet, blowing up boats destroys any evidence of what they were carrying or where they were heading.
Further, these attacks are not disrupting trafficking flows. Most open-air drug boat smugglers are low-level players in loose criminal networks who are easily replaced. Kingpins outsource this work to impoverished fishermen with intimate knowledge of offshore waters. Moreover, drug-trafficking is profitable precisely because of the risk assumed by traffickers; increasing the risks will not eliminate the activity but rather increase the risk-premium paid to smugglers. In other words, these strikes may expand the profit motives for narco-trafficking. In many rural parts of Latin America, the illicit drug trade is the only way out of extreme poverty besides emigrating, an escape route against which the Trump administration is also waging war. Either option can prove deadly, but migration from Latin America is often motivated by efforts to escape a very real threat of violence, itself further exacerbated by militarized counternarcotics policies.
Ulterior Motives
Trump’s pledge to pardon JOH came on the eve of highly contested national elections in Honduras in which Trump endorsed the far-right National Party candidate, Nasry Asfura. He also threatened to cut aid to the country if Asfura did not win. JOH was released from prison as the votes were still being counted.
The boat strikes, meddling in Honduran elections, pardoning of JOH, criminalization of Central American migrants and ongoing enactment of policies that destabilize their countries reinforce the hollowness and hypocrisy of the War on Drugs.
Despite the promise of the National Party’s return to power, reports suggest that JOH will not return to Honduras immediately, choosing instead to remain in the United States for now. This stands in painful contrast to the Trump administration’s treatment of almost all other Hondurans in the country, who have been subject to mass deportations, the revocation of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and attacks on their asylum protections, especially women.
The boat strikes, meddling in Honduran elections, pardoning of JOH, criminalization of Central American migrants and ongoing enactment of policies that destabilize their countries reinforce the hollowness and hypocrisy of the War on Drugs. It also challenges the Trump administration’s claim to defending “law-and-order.” Speaking on the JOH conviction, then-head of the DEA, Anne Milgram, said “This case should send a clear message that no one is above the law or beyond our reach.” Trump’s pardon of JOH sends the complete opposite message.
The brazenness of the Trump administration’s policies reveal how the “war on drugs” has often been used as a cover to advance U.S. political goals, especially the implementation by force of neoliberal economic agendas.
Besides embracing contradictory and draconian supply-side policies, Trump has reinvigorated prohibition on the consumer side, despite significant and long-standing evidence that harm reduction saves lives. In fact, the decrease in U.S. overdose deaths achieved in 2024 is likely to reverse due to the Trump administration’s spending cuts on harm reduction. What prohibition has done is motivate illicit entrepreneurs to create more potent drugs that are easier to smuggle but have worse public health consequences. In other words,the fentanyl crisis is a direct result of decades of failed prohibitionary drug policies paired with a pharmaceutical system motivated by profit. Doubling down on failed policies will not save lives.
From Venezuela to Honduras to the United States, President Trump’s embrace of powerful sycophants and disdain for the poor and marginalized mobilized through the rhetoric of the “War on Drugs” reflects a shameless disregard for the lives of ordinary people, wherever they may be from. His administration’s drug policy prescriptions will continue to kill, with dire consequences for victims, families, and the rule of law.
