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In his 2016 campaign, President Trump seized on the death of Sarah Root, who police said was killed by an undocumented immigrant suspected of driving drunk.
March 1, 2025, 12:25 p.m. ET
The government of Honduras said it had begun the process of extraditing to the United States an undocumented immigrant who was accused of killing a young Iowa woman in 2016, a case that President 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.
Mr. Mejia was allegedly driving drunk when he crashed into Sarah Root’s vehicle at a stoplight in Omaha in January 2016. He was detained and charged, but fled the country after being released on bond.
He was arrested on 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 on Friday, according to Honduran officials.
Enrique Reina, Honduras’s foreign minister, said in an interview that the Supreme Court had ordered Mr. 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,” Mr. Reina said, adding that the Honduran government had received more than 50 extradition requests from the United States since President Xiomara Castro took office in 2022.
