U.S.-Trained Police Are Hunting Down and Arresting Protesters Amid Post-Election Crisis in Honduras

Defensores en Línea

Por Sandra Cuffe

It was the middle of the night when they broke down the door. The children, aged 3 and 6, and their parents were all fast asleep in their home in Pimienta, a town 18 miles south of San Pedro Sula, in northwestern Honduras.

“They arrived at three in the morning,” said the mother of two whose home was raided. U.S.-trained and supported special forces agents, known as TIGRES, as well as criminal investigation officers searched the family home, flipping over the beds and ripping pillows apart while she and her children watched. Her partner had already been handcuffed and taken outside.

“My kids were frightened and crying,” she told The Intercept outside a San Pedro Sula courthouse. “They treated us like criminals, pointing their weapons at us.”

According to Honduran law, search warrants should only be executed between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., but there have been numerous reported cases of nighttime raids by security forces over the past several months, as the Honduran government cracks down on protests against the contested elections that delivered the presidency to incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández in November.

The Honduran Secretariat of Security claims that the raids and arrests in Pimienta were conducted legally, based on reports from the community, covered by arrest warrants, supervised by a prosecutor, and carried out during the hours allowed by law. Bulletproof police vests and looted items were confiscated during searches, a spokesperson for the Secretariat wrote in response to questions from The Intercept.

Yet all of the accounts of the raids and arrests from Pimienta residents and witnesses tell a different story: nighttime and dawn raids, terrified children, and TIGRES involvement. Some residents were told there was a search warrant and others weren’t, but no one remembered seeing one.

All in all, security forces carried out 10 raids in the early hours of December 26 and arrested 11 Pimienta residents on charges related to property destruction and assault on police officers in the context of protests against election fraud.

TIGRES special forces have been controversial since their founding in 2013, and their short history has been dogged by allegations of theft and corruption involving drug traffickers. Trained in Honduras and in the United States by Green Berets from the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), the TIGRES receive substantial support from the U.S. State Department. And they have been active participants in government repression during the current political crisis in Honduras.

Hernández was sworn in for his second term on January 27, two months after the November 26 general elections were marred by widespread reports of fraud. An early 5-point lead favoring opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla evaporated after the election data transmission system went offline for hours. Observers from the Organization of American States documented a host of irregularities and refused to endorse Hernández’s victory, claiming it was impossible to have any certainty about the outcome.

Within days of the elections, opposition supporters took to the streets around the country, defying a state of exception and curfew to protest election fraud. The rallies, marches, and highway blockades that rocked the country for two full months still continue here and there.

The government response has been an ongoing violent state crackdown, with security forces opening fire on protesters on multiple occasions. More than 35 protesters and bystanders have been killed by security forces and other unknown perpetrators, hundreds injured, and more than 1,000 detained. At least 22 people remain in jail in different parts of the country on charges related to protests.

The Trump administration has supported Hernández — a longtime U.S. ally in the region — as the victor of the election, and security assistance continues to flow. The State Department issued a certification back in November, two days after the contested election, allowing Honduras to receive millions of dollars of aid that was conditioned on progress with regard to human rights and corruption.