Near 1 million migrants fled Honduras for the U.S. border over the eight-year tenure of former President Juan Orlando Hernández, now dealing with drug trafficking prices after being arrested Tuesday following a U.S. name for arrest and extradition.
With the nation at present totaling a inhabitants of simply over 10 million, this determine represents roughly 10 % of the Central American nation's inhabitants.
From 2014 to 2022, Hernández oversaw an administration that confronted allegations of corruption, and was known as a "narco-dictatorship" by present President Xiomara Castro after taking workplace this January.
The previous president's brother, Juan Antonio Hernández, was a infamous drug trafficker who earned tens of millions smuggling cocaine into the U.S. earlier than being arrested by Miami authorities in 2018. Reuters estimated in a March 2021 article that since 2015, between 150 and 300 tons of cocaine handed by way of Honduras to the U.S. every year.
As drug trafficking ran rampant, the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs continued to exert affect over massive parts of the nation, leaving it dealing with the fourth-highest murder fee on this planet. Crime within the nation typically goes unpunished because of corruption inside the judicial and regulation enforcement methods, stories Human Rights Watch.
Violence and financial insecurity surged alongside pressures introduced on by the COVID-19 pandemic, making 2021 the best yr for migration from Honduras to America's Southwest border below Hernández's reign. Over 319,000 migrants have been encountered on the Southwest border that yr, U.S. Customs and Border Safetyreported.
The second-greatest variety of crossings occurred in 2019, with over 261,000 Hondurans coming to the border. The third-greatest complete at near 91,000 befell in 2014, Hernández's first yr in workplace. Nevertheless, as a result of CBP stories its knowledge in monetary years, a portion of the 2014 complete probably arrived within the three months previous Hernández formally taking workplace.
Because it stands, it isn't clear what the timeline might appear like for Hernández's extradition. Marlon Duarte, an legal professional in Honduras' capital metropolis of Tegucigalpa who has labored on 5 extradition instances, instructed The New York Occasionsthat a authorized battle may take months, given the dearth of precedent concerning the extradition of a former president. Hernández stated he is able to tackle that battle.
"I am able to current myself voluntarily and defend myself in accordance with the regulation," he wrote in a Tuesday Fb message. "It isn't a straightforward second, I do not want it on anyone," he stated on Twitter.
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