Lawmaker Pushes for Ban on Special Treatment for Convicted Drug Traffickers After ProPublica Report
· ProPublica
A federal lawmaker is pushing for a provision that would bar the Federal Bureau of Prisons from offering taxpayer-funded VIP perks to pardoned drug lords and child traffickers.
Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat, introduced the measure last month as an amendment to a House appropriations bill, telling her colleagues that there “should never be preferential treatment for narco leaders.”
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The move comes in response to ProPublica reporting on the special treatment extended to one high-profile pardon recipient — former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was released from a federal penitentiary late last year. Less than 18 months earlier, Hernández had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for taking bribes and allowing drug traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S. while he was in office.
But after President Donald Trump pardoned him in December, the Central American strongman — who has long maintained his innocence — got what Torres and others have described as the “red carpet” treatment. On the day of his release, ProPublica found, Hernández had in place what’s known as an immigration detainer, a formal request for law enforcement agencies to hold noncitizens for pickup by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet instead of holding him, the Federal Bureau of Prisons scrambled to get the detainer removed so he could walk free. Then, instead of giving him a bus ticket or airfare to get home on his own, prison officials paid a four-man tactical team overtime to drive him six hours from a West Virginia high-security facility to the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, New York, according to records and three people familiar with the situation.
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Amid Mass ICE Arrests, Trump Pardon Recipient Juan Orlando Hernández Given Special TreatmentTorres sought to stop that sort of treatment with a narrowly tailored amendment barring the bureau and several other agencies from using taxpayer dollars to give convicted drug traffickers and child traffickers — even those who have been pardoned or received a sentence commutation — special accommodations or transportation, as well as from lifting “any detainers not provided to other inmates.”
Last month, the amendment hit an early stumbling block when the House Appropriations Committee voted along party lines against including it in its proposed 2027 spending bill.
“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to give convicted criminals special accommodations, lifted legal holds, or government-funded transportation,” Torres said in a press release afterward. “We should be enforcing the law, not handing out favors. I’m shocked that my Republican colleagues didn’t agree with that common sense idea.”
But that doesn’t necessarily mean the proposal is dead. Last week in a statement to ProPublica, Torres — a Guatemalan immigrant who last year criticized the decision to pardon Hernández — said she planned to raise the issue before the Rules Committee, which can decide whether previously rejected amendments still get a vote on the House floor.
“I am not giving up,” she said, adding: “The American people deserve a government that enforces the law fairly and holds powerful criminals accountable, regardless of who pardons them.”
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment on the measure out of respect for members of Congress. Previously, a spokesperson said that the bureau does not discuss conditions of confinement or security procedures and that employee standards of conduct prohibit staff from giving any prisoners preferential treatment. ICE had previously referred questions to the White House, which this week did not respond to a request for comment.
Long before his arrest and controversial release, Hernández had been a polarizing figure, plagued by allegations of corruption in his country. Still, he was seen as a key U.S. ally under the Obama and first Trump administrations, in part because of his apparent interest in tackling drug trafficking and migration issues.
But in 2018, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration arrested his younger brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernández, for weapons and drug trafficking charges. The following year, a jury found Tony Hernández guilty in a Manhattan federal trial.
And weeks after the elder Hernández left office in 2022, he was arrested in Honduras and extradited to the U.S. to face drug trafficking and weapons charges. Prosecutors said Juan Orlando Hernández funded his political career with money he got from “violent drug-trafficking organizations” in exchange for allowing them to “move mountains of cocaine” out of the country. At one point, they said during trial, he bragged that he would “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
After a federal jury voted to convict him in early 2024, Hernández was sent to a notorious high-security penitentiary in West Virginia to serve his time. Last year, he appealed to Trump’s sympathies, penning a four-page letter framing his case as a “political persecution” by the Biden administration.
In November — two days before the Honduran presidential election that swept Hernández’s right-wing National Party back into power — Trump announced his intent to pardon his former Central American counterpart. Experts said the timing sent an obvious message on the eve of a tight race; as one former high-ranking U.S. diplomat previously told ProPublica, the pardon was a show of support that served as a “clear green light for the National Party to manipulate the vote.”
(The narrow victory for Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who had been trailing in multiple polls, came amid reports of voter intimidation and fraud allegations. After the election, Asfura promised to “work tirelessly for Honduras.”)
On Dec. 1, Trump formally granted Hernández the full pardon, and by the end of the day he was on his way to the swank, five-star hotel in New York City, ProPublica reported. Days later, Renato Stabile, Hernández’s court-appointed lawyer, filed a motion to vacate the judgment and dismiss the indictment in light of the presidential pardon. When prosecutors didn’t file a response opposing it, a federal court agreed to Stabile’s request.
Previously, Stabile told ProPublica his client’s treatment during the release process was appropriate, as Hernández could have been arrested or killed had he been deported to his home country. He also declined to comment on where Hernández stayed but said the government did not pay the bill. Hernández had declined to comment through his attorney.
At the time, Joe Rojas, a retired prison worker and former union leader, said that BOP staff were “disgusted” after the agency “rolled out the red carpet” for Hernández.
Last month, when the amendment came up for debate in front of the 63-member House Appropriations Committee, Torres held up a printed copy of ProPublica’s investigation as she told her colleagues about the special treatment Hernández received and about how the prisons agency had used “our hard-earned taxpayer dollars” to pay for his transport to New York.
“These actions can never be allowed to happen ever again,” she said.
Two other lawmakers spoke in support of the measure. One, Rep. Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, opposed it, calling the amendment “performative and unnecessary.” He did not explain his reasoning to the committee, and his office did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Ultimately, 31 Republicans opposed the amendment and 27 Democrats supported it. None of the Republican members who voted against the amendment responded to requests for comment from ProPublica.
Though Torres plans to raise the issue again this summer in front of the Rules Committee, the 9-4 Republican majority there makes it unlikely the measure will garner enough support to move forward right now.
But if the House fails to agree on spending bills before the end of this Congress, the November elections could change the balance of power and give the Democrats more say in what amendments make it to the floor next year.
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