Honduras Must Extradite Its Drug-Trafficking Communists to Heal National Wounds

It is time to extradite members of the Zelaya family.

Ten years ago, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was considered one of the most reliable allies of the U.S. in Central America, beloved by both Republicans and Democrats for his tough-on-crime policies, his innovative free market reforms and willingness to reach across the aisle to achieve crucial goals.

“The Government of Honduras signed a unique accountability agreement with Transparency International. You should be complimented on that. That’s a big deal - featuring a commitment to share more information with the public about government procurement, including your own security forces. Again, you’re moving in the right direction... You’ve taken steps to tackle criminal networks responsible for your region’s security challenges, at great personal danger to yourselves. It takes a lot of courage, Mr. President,” then-Vice President Joe Biden said to JOH during a plenary session of the Latin American “Alliance for Prosperity” 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 became unmoored with reality and decided they would stop at nothing to stop him. This also extended to his allies abroad. When JOH was happy to work with President Trump on the same goals of peace, stability, drug interdiction and encouraging investment that they also worked on with the Obama administration, JOH was quickly placed on the deep state’s hit list.

The Deep State was, unbeknownst to many in the Trump administration, sowing the seeds against JOH as they were against President Trump – building a case based on the false testimony of the drug kingpins who JOH was responsible for imprisoning. After President Trump was illegally ousted from office via voter fraud, the Biden administration came for JOH’s scalp as well, using the extradition agreement that JOH once signed to railroad him.

JOH caught the ire of Democrats in particular because he was one of the main proponents of the “Safe Third Country” agreement devised during the first Trump administration to mitigate the planned flood of illegals coming in from the U.S. southern border. Asylum seekers were re-routed to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador rather than being dumped into the U.S. where they could flood the system by design. The policy was very successful at keeping illegals from coming into the U.S., but it made JOH a pariah among Democrats who desperately wanted to manufacture a border crisis that they could pin on President Trump.

NSC Senior Director and Biden’s Special Assistant Juan Gonzalez went from meeting with JOH and shaking his hand in a photo op to accusing JOH of being a drug trafficker as the Trump administration applauded JOH’s work on stopping irregular migration. Rep. Norma Torres of California also went from lauding JOH, holding multiple friendly meetings based on facilitating cooperation between the U.S. and Honduras, to releasing an official statement demanding JOH’s extradition.

LIBRE Party member and advisor to former President Xiomara Castro, Gilberto Rios, appeared on TV and admitted a quid pro quo deal that the Biden administration made with the then-incoming Xiomara Castro regime to get JOH’s head on a silver platter. Rios said: “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,”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris attended the inauguration of Xiomara Castro in 2022, releasing a public statement lauding Xiomara Castro as a pioneer because of her status as the first woman president of Honduras. Harris and Castro posed for several high-profile photo ops wearing their COVID masks. Just a few hours after the meeting, JOH’s indictment was signed, and the nightmare began not just for JOH but also the Honduran people.

Afterwards, the Biden administration gloated and made it clear how political JOH’s arrest was, stating that they had “the honor to request the provisional arrest...of Juan Orlando Hernandez,” a petty take on President Trump’s declaration that it was an “honor” to be with JOH. For a while, it looked like the electoral coup was successful in Honduras and would doom the country to a Venezuela-like descent into socialism and despair. But everything flipped last year when National Party candidate Tito Asfura defeated both of his far-left competitors to take the country back.

President Donald Trump was the deciding factor, giving a last-minute endorsement to Asfura as well as pardoning JOH right before the national election took place. Now, there is a chance to finally bury the communists in Honduras, using the same tactics as the Biden administration – only with a sound pretext that cannot be disputed. The hated Zelaya dynasty that birthed Xiomara Castro’s reign of terror has been literally caught on video negotiating drug bribes to fuel the rise of Xiomara Castro’s political career and LIBRE Party activism.

It is time to extradite members of the Zelaya family, including but not limited to former President Mel Zalaya; former Secretary of Congress Carlos Zelaya; and former Minister of Defense José Manuel Zelaya; as well as LIBRE Party chieftains to the U.S. to face justice. The new Honduran administration must off the head of the snake while it is hurting and before it can regroup. Once communism is dispatched in Honduras, the nation can become as reliable of a U.S. ally as El Salvador. President Asfura: I implore you to use the extradition powers to imprison the Zelaya family and make it your legacy to deliver the death blow to communism in your great country.