This summer, amid an ongoing child refugee crisis, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and First Lady Ana García Hernández traveled to the United States. Their country had descended into violent bedlam, prompting tens of thousands of children to flee. Speaking in Washington, DC before the Chamber of Congress, Hernández asserted that US drug and immigration policies were partially to blame for the surge in children heading north.

While media outlets noted the president’s remarks, they have largely failed to mention that the exodus has been fueled by the very policies Hernández and the US support — most notably the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya’s democratically elected government. As Dana Frank and other experts on Honduras have pointed out, this precipitated a collapse in the country’s institutions.

Corruption reached new highs; the police and military were able to act with impunity, using violent repression to crush anti-coup resistance. Femicides, political killings, and murders of those in the LGBT community spiked, yet the crimes went unpunished and were rarely even investigated. Reporters, lawyers, and judges have also been targeted in the years since; police often blame the homicides on “personal enmities,” love triangles, or interpersonal disputes.