Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez returned to his country on Sunday, almost eight months after US President Donald Trump pardoned his 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, according to multiple news reports. Hernandez, who governed from 2014 to 2022, arrived on a private flight at Palmerola Airport near Tegucigalpa and was greeted by his family and hundreds of supporters, journalists from Agence France-Presse observed. He is scheduled to appear in a Honduran court on 3 August to face accusations of fraud and money laundering related to the alleged diversion of two million dollars of public funds to finance his 2013 presidential campaign, as reported by El Universal and El Espectador. Hernandez has declared himself innocent of those charges.

Supporters welcomed the former president with banners thanking Trump, while his wife Ana Garcia told AFP that the family is “very grateful for the brave decision of President Trump.” Garcia described her husband as a victim of persecution, according to El Universal. Opposition sectors, however, question the pardon granted by Washington and demand that Hernandez answer before Honduran courts, Aristegui Noticias reported. Ana Maria Mendez, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told AFP that the return is “a test for judicial independence” and “reopens the debate on impunity” following the pardon.

The pardon was granted by Trump before the November 2025 presidential elections, which Hernandez’s co-partisan Nasry Asfura won by a narrow margin after Trump threatened to cut aid to Honduras if Asfura was not elected, according to El Universal and El Espectador. Hernandez had been extradited to the United States in April 2022 and was convicted in June 2024 in a New York federal court of helping smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US in alliance with traffickers including Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, as reported by multiple sources. The sentence was annulled in April 2026 after the pardon, which Trump said was because Hernandez was the victim of a “setup” by his predecessor Joe Biden, according to El Espectador.

A judge suspended an arrest warrant against Hernandez in late June after his defence requested voluntary surrender, meaning he was not detained upon arrival, La Republica reported. Hernandez told Reuters that he will ask for the charges to be dismissed. The former president wrote on X that he returns “as one more citizen, to rebuild my life in peace and without any political electoral ambition,” according to La Republica. Legal experts in Honduras are divided on how the local case will proceed, the same source noted, after charges were dismissed against former president Porfirio Lobo and former finance secretary Wilfredo Cerrato in the same “Pandora II” corruption investigation.