Honduras moves to extradite man accused of killing Iowa woman

The government of Honduras said it has begun the process of extraditing to the United States an immigrant who was living in the U.S. illegally and was accused of killing a young Iowa woman in 2016, a case that President Donald Trump made a focal point in his first presidential campaign.

The move to fulfill a U.S. request to extradite Eswin Mejia comes as Honduras and other Latin American countries have sought to demonstrate their willingness to cooperate with the Trump administration.

Mejia was allegedly driving drunk when he crashed into Sarah Root’s vehicle at a stoplight in Omaha, Nebraska, in January 2016. He was detained and charged, but fled the country after being released on bond.

He was arrested Thursday in a town about 125 miles northwest of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where he was taken and appeared before a Supreme Court judge Friday, according to Honduran officials.

Enrique Reina, Honduras’ foreign minister, said in an interview that the Supreme Court had ordered Mejia’s arrest and that a judge would determine whether to grant an extradition request by the United States.

“This has to go through a process,” Reina said, adding that the Honduran government had received more than 50 extradition requests from the U.S. since President Xiomara Castro took office in 2022.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The State Department referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not respond.

The Trump administration has pressured nations in the region to send individuals wanted by American authorities back to the United States, seeking early wins on the issues of illegal immigration and crime that are central to Trump’s political brand.

On the same day of Mejia’s arrest, Mexico sent 29 top cartel operatives wanted by American authorities. The group includes Rafael Caro Quintero, a founding member of the Sinaloa drug cartel, who was convicted in Mexico of masterminding the 1985 murder of Enrique Camarena, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. This past week, the Trump administration also met with a high-level Mexican delegation to try to hammer out a new security agreement.

Ricardo Zúniga, a retired State Department official who served as its special envoy for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, said the concessions were part of a broader effort by Latin American countries to showcase their efforts to target criminal groups and illegal immigration as Trump threatens to impose new tariffs.

“For many governments in the region, having a deal where they give Trump what he wants and in exchange they’re left alone and no one will get in their business, they’re quite comfortable with that deal,” Zúniga said. “On the other hand, they are quite worried about tariffs.”

The case of Root, who was 21 when she was killed, became a focus for Trump during his first campaign in 2016. In that race, he repeatedly emphasized his plans to crack down on illegal immigration and sought to spotlight cases in which immigrants living in the country illegally were accused of crimes.

Unlike Mexico, Honduras does not face imminent tariffs. But the country’s government has been eager to show it is open to working with the Trump administration.

Honduras was left off Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s itinerary through Central America last month, on his first official trip, sending what experts said was a clear message to Castro.

Last year, Castro moved to end a long-standing extradition treaty with the United States, and on New Year’s Day, she threatened to expel the U.S. military from an important air base if Trump carried out mass deportations.

Recently, the Honduran government has reversed course.

Last week, the country agreed to allow its Soto Cano air base to serve as a transfer point for deportation flights from Guantánamo. Venezuelan deportees were flown by American authorities from the naval base to Honduras, where they were transferred to a flight sent by the Venezuelan government.

Reina, the foreign minister, said then that it was a sign of Honduras’ strengthening ties with the United States.

Honduras agreed last month to continue the extradition treaty with the United States that Castro previously moved to end. Tony García, the deputy foreign minister, said in an interview at the time that Honduras hoped that doing so would lead to “warmer and more fluid relations” with the United States, “because that’s been a thorny topic.”

On Thursday, the Honduran government announced Mejia’s capture in a social media post and said that the “historic arrest was made possible thanks to the cooperation between the government of President @XiomaraCastroZ and the administration of President @realDonaldTrump.”

Honduras had been aware that Mejia was in the country for some time, according to a person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Castro government moved to arrest him quickly after an extradition request from the United States came, the person said.

The Honduran government could still face domestic legal challenges in sending Mejia back to the United States, the person said. Honduran law makes it difficult to extradite individuals accused of murder.

Mejia will remain in custody in Honduras until his next hearing in this month, authorities said Friday.

His arrest comes as Trump has continued to link crime to illegal immigration, a centerpiece of his strategy to build support for his anti-immigration agenda. He has had some success. Polling during the most recent campaign showed that Americans supported Republicans more than Democrats on immigration.

One of his first victories of his second term was legislation named for a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student killed last year by a migrant from Venezuela who had crossed into the United States illegally. The bill requires the detention of migrants who enter the country without authorization and are arrested or charged with certain crimes.

While crimes committed by immigrants have received national attention, Trump also has a long history of inflating their criminality. For the past 150 years, immigrants overall have been less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States, a 2023 study concluded.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.