I was disappointed not to be able to travel to Honduras for this report, but it turns out that the great migration of recent years has placed Hondurans all over North America. They explained the role that Honduras' president has played in forcing people to migrate north, even as the U.S. embraced him.
— Tim Steller
Moises Castillo / The Associated Press
Migrantes, muchos de ellos de Honduras, esperaron en enero en un puente que cruza el río Suchiate en la frontera de Guatemala con México para tener la oportunidad de dirigirse al norte hacia los Estados Unidos. El objetivo de muchos era solicitar asilo en Estados Unidos.
If you spoke with any of the thousands of Honduran asylum seekers who passed through Tucson last year, you heard common reasons for their flight to the United States: violence, poverty, extortion.
If you listened carefully, you might also have heard an unfamiliar phrase: “JOH.” In Spanish it’s pronounced, more or less, “Ho,” and refers to a man’s initials.
The man is Juan Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras.
What Hondurans long suspected and Americans later found out was that the president of Honduras, who has functional control of all branches of government, is also deeply implicated in drug trafficking to the United States.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan revealed that in court filings against the president’s brother, Tony Hernandez, in August 2019, and witnesses testified to it in Tony Hernandez’s October 2019 trial. The president’s brother was found guilty of four crimes, including conspiring to import about 220 tons of cocaine to the United States.
Honduras had plenty of problems before Hernandez first took power in 2014, of course. But some Honduran migrants say the destruction of social protections that drove them out occurred under his watch, even as the Obama administration aided him and Trump tightened the American embrace.
Not surprisingly, a country run by organized crime became consumed by it from top to bottom. What has been surprising is the U.S. role in supporting the same government that, according to many Honduran migrants and experts, caused them to flee to the United States.
