Federal lawmakers are pushing for a provision that would prohibit the Federal Bureau of Prisons from providing taxpayer-funded VIP benefits to pardoned drug lords and child traffickers.
California Democratic Rep. Norma Torres introduced the measure last month as an amendment to the House appropriations bill, telling her colleagues that “there should never be preferential treatment for drug leaders.”
The move was in response to ProPublica reporting that special treatment was being extended to one of the high-profile pardon recipients, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was released from federal prison late last year. Less than 18 months later, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for bribery and allowing drug traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while in office.
But after President Donald Trump pardoned him in December, the Central American strongman, who had long maintained his innocence, received what Torres and others called a “red carpet” treatment. ProPublica found that on the day of Hernández’s release, he established a so-called immigration detention center, which formally requested law enforcement agencies to detain noncitizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But instead of detaining him, the Federal Bureau of Prisons rushed to remove detainees so he could walk free. Instead of giving him a bus ticket or airfare to get home on his own, prison officials then paid a four-person tactical team overtime to drive him six hours from the maximum-security facility in West Virginia to the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, New York, according to records and three people familiar with the situation.
Torres sought to block that kind of treatment with a narrowly tailored amendment that would prohibit the department and several other agencies from using taxpayer dollars to provide special accommodations or transportation to convicted drug traffickers or child traffickers, even those who have received pardons or commutations, and from releasing “detainees not provided to other inmates.”
The amendment hit an early stumbling block last month when the House Appropriations Committee voted along party lines against including it in the 2027 spending bill.
“Taxpayer money should not be used to give convicted felons special accommodations, lift legal holds, or provide government-funded transportation,” Torres said in a subsequent press release. “We should be enforcing the law, not taking advantage of it. I’m shocked that my Republican colleagues didn’t agree with that common sense idea.”
However, that does not necessarily mean that the proposal is invalid. Torres, a Guatemalan immigrant who criticized the decision to pardon Hernández last year, said in a statement to ProPublica last week that he intended to take the issue to the Rules Committee, which can decide whether the previously rejected amendment gets a vote in the House.
“I’m not giving up,” he said, adding, “Americans deserve a government that fairly enforces the law and holds powerful criminals accountable, regardless of who pardons them.”
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment on the move, citing respect for lawmakers. A spokesperson previously said the department does not discuss conditions of confinement or security procedures, and that its standards of conduct prohibit staff from giving preferential treatment to prisoners. ICE previously referred questions to the White House, which did not respond to requests for comment this week.
Long before his arrest and controversial release, Mr. Hernández was a polarizing figure, dogged by domestic corruption allegations. Still, it was seen as a key ally of the United States under the Obama and Trump administrations, in part because of its apparent interest in tackling drug trafficking and immigration issues.
But in 2018, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration arrested his brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernandez, on weapons and drug trafficking charges. The following year, a jury convicted Tony Hernandez in a Manhattan federal trial.
Then, just weeks after Hernández left office in 2022, he was arrested in Honduras on drug trafficking and weapons charges and extradited to the United States. Prosecutors said Juan Orlando Hernández financed his political career with money he received from a “violent drug lord” in exchange for allowing “mountains of cocaine” to be shipped out of the country. At one point during the trial, he allegedly boasted that he would “stuff drugs up gringos’ noses.”
After a federal jury convicted him in early 2024, Hernandez was sent to a notorious maximum-security prison in West Virginia to serve his sentence. Last year, he wrote a four-page letter characterizing his lawsuit as “political persecution” by the Biden administration and pleading for sympathy for President Trump.
In November, two days before the Honduran presidential election that returned Hernández’s right-wing National Party to power, President Trump announced his intention to pardon the Central American. Experts said the timing sends a clear message on the eve of a close race. A former senior U.S. diplomat previously told ProPublica that 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 of Nasri “Tito” Asfulura, who had trailed in several opinion polls, came amid reports of voter intimidation and fraud. After the election, Asfullah pledged to “work tirelessly for Honduras.”)
On December 1, President Trump formally granted Hernandez a full pardon, and by the end of the day, Hernandez was on his way to an upscale five-star hotel in New York City, ProPublica reported. Days later, Hernández’s public defender, Renato Stabile, filed a motion to vacate the sentence and dismiss the charges, citing the presidential pardon. When prosecutors did not file an answer to the contrary, a federal court agreed to Stabile’s request.
Stabile previously told ProPublica that his client’s treatment during the release process was appropriate because Hernandez could have been arrested or killed had he been deported to his home country. He also declined to comment on where Hernández was staying, but said the government had not paid the bill. Hernández, through his lawyer, declined to comment.
Joe Rojas, a former prison official and former union leader, said at the time that BOP officials were “disgusted” after authorities “rolled out the red carpet” for Hernandez.
When the amendment was debated before the 63-member House Appropriations Committee last month, Mr. Torres held up a printout of ProPublica’s findings and told his colleagues about the special treatment Mr. Hernandez received and how prison officials used his “hard-earned tax dollars” to pay for transportation to New York.
“This kind of behavior can never be allowed to happen again,” she said.
Two other members also spoke in support of the bill. One of them, Rep. Hal Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, opposed the amendment, calling it “performative and unnecessary.” He did not explain his reasons to the committee, and his office did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
In the end, 31 Republicans opposed the amendment and 27 Democrats supported it. None of the Republicans who voted against the amendment responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
Torres plans to raise the issue again in the Rules Committee this summer, but with a 9-4 Republican majority, the bill is unlikely to garner enough support to move forward right away.
But if the House fails to agree on a spending bill by the end of this session, the November election could shift the balance of power and give Democrats more say in the amendments they bring to the floor next year.
