Juan Orlando Hernández

His siblings include Hilda Hernández (1966–2017) and Juan Antonio (Tony) Hernández, a former deputy now in U.S. federal custody on drug trafficking charges.

He has a master's degree in public administration from the State University of New York at Albany.

Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado (born 28 October 1968), also known as JOH, is a Honduran lawyer, politician and convicted drug trafficker who served as President of Honduras from 2014 to 2022 for two consecutive terms.

On 3 February 1990, he married Ana García Carías.

This union has produced three children: Juan Orlando, Ana Daniela, and Isabela.

He was a coffee-growing campesino in his native Gracias.

A member of the National Party, Hernández previously served as the president of the National Congress of Honduras between January 2010 and June 2013, when he was given permission by the Congress to absent himself from all responsibilities in the Congress to dedicate himself to his presidential campaign.

Juan Orlando Hernández, who represented Lempira Department since 2001, was elected President of the National Congress where the National Party had a comfortable majority, on 21 January 2010, and took office four days later.

In 2012, he fought a campaign against Ricardo Álvarez to try to become the National Party presidential candidate for 2013, and won the internal election of November 2012; Álvarez publicly denounced the result as fraudulent and demanded a "vote by vote" recount, which the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) rejected.

A poll conducted in May 2013 saw him in third place with a projected 18% of the vote.

He began his presidential campaign in July 2013 in Intibucá and La Paz with a campaign entitled El Pueblo Propone (The People Propose in English).

He campaigned for the military to police the streets, and claimed that his closest rival Xiomara Castro wanted to remove the Policía Militar (English: Military Police) which were already in Honduras' two main cities.

He won the election, beating Castro by 250,000 votes.

Hernández said National Party accountants found that approximately L3 million lempira (about US$140,000) from companies with links to the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS) scandal had entered its campaign coffers.

On 22 April 2015, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed presidential re-election.

In May 2015, Radio Globo discovered documents that allegedly showed that the Honduran National Party had received large amounts of cash from nonexistent companies through fraudulent contracts awarded by the IHSS when it was run by Mario Zelaya.

The contracts were approved by the National Congress of Honduras when Hernández was its president and the party funding committee was headed by his sister, Hilda Hernández.

Hernández has accepted that his election campaign received money from companies tied to the scandal, but denies any personal knowledge.

By June 2015, Hernández had appointed a commission to investigate the cause of the corruption.

On 15 December 2016, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal decided, by two votes to one, to allow Hernández to stand in the primary elections by the National Party of Honduras on 12 March 2017.

He announced that he would seek re-election in 2017, after the Supreme Court allowed it in April 2015.

On 12 March 2017, he won the National Party's primary vote to allow him to represent his party during the 2017 Honduran general election on 26 November 2017.

In the elections, Hernández was declared the winner by a narrow margin (0.5%), after a reelection campaign criticized as fraudulent by OAS, while the United States recognized Hernández as the official winner.

The same day he ceased to be president, he was sworn as a member of the Central American Parliament.

On 1 July 2021, Hernández had his visa revoked by the U.S. Department of State, due to involvements in corruption and in the illegal drug trade.

This measure was made public on 7 February 2022, shortly after his successor to the presidency had been sworn in.

On 14 February, he was surrounded by the national police and DEA agents at his home in Tegucigalpa, after the U.S. government had requested his extradition for his involvement with narcotics.

On 15 February 2022, he agreed to surrender to US authorities, and on 21 April, Hernández was extradited to the United States.

On 8 March 2024, Hernández was convicted of three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy and faces mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in prison.

Hernández was born in Gracias, Honduras to Juan Hernández Villanueva and Elvira Alvarado Castillo, as the fifteenth of seventeen children.

On 12 March 2017, Hernández became the National Party candidate by defeating his rival Roberto Castillo during the National Party primary.

The Honduran Constitution allows revocation of citizenship of anyone who promotes changing the law to allow re-election, however Hernández's National Party, which also controls Congress, says a Supreme Court ruling last year allows him to stand for a new term.

Opposition Liberal Party claims that the court does not have the power to make such decisions.

The President was re-elected in the 2017 presidential election after a vote deemed fraudulent by the opposition and international observers.

The government declared a state of emergency.

Some 30 demonstrators were killed and more than 800 arrested.

According to the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, "many of them were transferred to military installations, where they were brutally beaten, insulted and sometimes tortured".

Hondurans both in and outside Honduras have protested against corruption in Honduras, allegedly by the Hernández government as well as the judiciary, the military, the police and other public administration entities, demanding an end to embezzlement of funds and public money.

In 2017, the Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami arrested Hernández's brother, Juan Antonio Hernández, for drug trafficking and for using Honduran military personnel and equipment to ship cocaine to the United States on behalf of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.

On 21 June 2018, president Hernández ordered units of the Honduran army and the military police in the streets of the capital after renewed protests.