On November 28, 2025, President Donald Trump
announced on social media that he intended to issue a "full and complete pardon" to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. President Trump formally
granted the pardon on December 1, 2025, and Hernández was released from prison on the same day, according to the
Federal Bureau of Prisons. Hernández had been
sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2024 after a U.S. federal jury
convicted him of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and related firearms offenses. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Hernández and his co-conspirators trafficked more than 400 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine through Honduras between 2004 and 2022. In his pardon announcement, President Trump asserted that Hernández had been treated "unfairly."