These days, fear doesn’t leave him alone, the Honduran immigrant and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant said, even when he’s working in construction or at home with his family. He spends sleepless nights, watching his daughters and praying that the Trump administration doesn’t deport him to Honduras, where he claims death awaits him for his collaboration with U.S. authorities.
“Thank God, the opportunity to be in this country has been the best thing ever. My focus has always been my family, my work, and going to church,” he said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. He requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Honduran criminal group he was involved in.
“If tomorrow they expel me — I don’t know what will happen to me. My problem isn’t small, it’s a matter of life or death,” the informant said, explaining he’s provided information to U.S. authorities that, among other things, led to the arrest of a major Honduran drug trafficker.
Federal agencies often rely on the help of confidential informants to conduct investigations and secure the conviction of drug traffickers and criminal kingpins. Some of these informants, however, are in the country illegally.
Immigrant informants like the Honduran man and others who’ve spoken publicly about their cases say that without the protection of a visa or legal immigration status, they’re always at risk of deportation and potential danger if they’re sent away.
Though the Honduran informant doesn’t have a visa or green card, he was able to obtain protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) — a measure that prevents deportation to a person who runs a real risk of being tortured in their home country.
However, experts consulted by Noticias Telemundo confirmed that current laws that allow for deportations to third countries apply to cases of deportation suspension and CAT protection. This, despite the fact that in many cases international criminal networks have tentacles throughout Latin America.
Noticias Telemundo contacted the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DEA and the FBI for information and comment on the situation of immigrant informants, following President Donald Trump’s promise to carry out the largest migrant deportation plan in the country’s history. It did not receive a response from the agencies.
‘Informants are the wheels’
“The FBI investigates more than 250 types of crimes, including counterterrorism, counterintelligence, kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking, and I can tell you that much of the work, almost of all of it, involves help” from informants, said Arturo Fontes, who worked for 28 years at the FBI on drug trafficking and organized crime cases. Fontes was one of the agents who tracked Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
“We always say that informants are the wheels, and the government is the cart. And without the wheels, the cart can’t move forward; informants are too important,” Fontes said.
The Honduran informant said that “in another country, without the collaboration of a third party outside law enforcement, it’s very difficult for the FBI or the DEA to capture someone — sometimes we make mistakes, like everyone else, but if it weren’t for what we were able to do, maybe they wouldn’t have arrested anyone.”
The DEA had more than 18,000 informants assigned to its national offices between 2010 and 2015 and more than 9,000 of them received nearly $237 million in total payments for information or services, according to an audit by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General. That figure has not been updated in subsequent public reports; also, the latest report doesn’t indicate how many of the informants were foreign nationals.
In 2021, the group Open the Books, which charts government spending, reported that informant funding from the DEA, FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) reached $550 million.
Rocky Herron, a former agent who spent 31 years investigating drug trafficking networks, said that in his “career at the DEA, there are no cases without an informant — every investigation depends on them.”
“Maybe the informant introduces an undercover agent who carries out the investigation, but that agent has to enter the organization through someone, or it could be a person who falls into prison and wants to negotiate a reduced sentence with the government and provides information,” Herron said. “I used informants in all my investigations.”
The complex relationship between law enforcement and immigrant informants has produced high-profile cases in which individuals have alleged they provided crucial assistance in a criminal investigation but later faced deportation.
Ernesto Gamboa, a Salvadoran auto mechanic in the West Coast, generated headlines when he claimed he helped police for 14 years in hundreds of drug raids — but faced deportation in 2009 once he ended his collaboration claiming he had stopped getting a stipend. Authorities later dropped deportation charges against him.
Carla Deras, a Mexican immigrant, stated she was recruited by ICE to assist in dismantling a child-trafficking ring; she said an agent she worked with urged authorities not to deport her while she was waiting to obtain a special visa. But after the agent left, Deras said she was left in limbo. “We’re illegal. I don’t have any money, and I can’t apply for unemployment benefits,” she said in a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“There are almost no restrictions on who the government can pressure to become informants,” Alexandra Natapoff, a Harvard Law School scholar and author of “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice,” told Noticias Telemundo.
“We don’t provide good protections for any whistleblower, let alone those pressured to cooperate under threat of deportation,” she said.
In 2017, then-Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz told Congress that “the use of informants carries risks because these individuals typically have criminal records, and they often provide assistance or cooperation in exchange for cash or the prospect of a reduced sentence, rather than out of a desire to help enforce the law.”
A ‘huge risk’
Foreign informants face immigration problems even though cooperation with authorities could give them an opportunity to apply for an S visa, which allows federal law enforcement agencies to submit applications for them to receive a green card.
“Normally, the district attorney helps the applicant apply for a visa, but it can be very difficult to obtain and time-consuming,” Kevin Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said. “With Trump, we’re seeing a tightening of the requirements for all visas — so I wouldn’t be surprised if this category is subject to special scrutiny.”
Several former federal agents interviewed by Noticias Telemundo said the process is so exhaustive that it’s rare to obtain this kind of visa. Although there is a legal limit of 200 S visas per year, a report by the Congressional Research Service indicates that between 1995 and 2004, only 511 were approved for informants. In 2012, for example, only one such visa was issued.
The Honduran informant said he hasn’t been able to obtain an S visa.
Attorney Javier Maldonado, who has litigated immigration issues in Texas for decades and has had many clients who’ve cooperated with authorities, said about half of those clients have ultimately been deported.
“It’s a huge risk,” he said. “I’ve had clients who have cooperated with these law enforcement agencies, and I always have to warn them that the balance of power is not equal. They depend on the mercy of the agencies and what they want to decide.”
“Many of these individuals have immigration or criminal records that prevent them from regularizing their legal status in the United States,” Maldonado said. He said that if authorities don’t facilitate the process for an informant, “they remain in a kind of limbo unless they request measures such as suspension of deportation and the Convention Against Torture.”
“All of us who are currently in the program, those of us who have collaborated, are in grave danger,” the immigrant informant said, citing the death in Honduras of someone who had helped them with the investigation.
Maldonado, the attorney, said “these migrants are at great risk,” especially if they’re from certain regions of the world like Central America.
“They have great concern about returning to those countries,” Maldonado said, “and now that the president has started sending people to El Salvador even if they’re not from that country, that’s going to make many more fearful of what might happen if they’re detained.”
The Honduran informant said he wants to stay in the U.S. working in construction. He enjoys getting up early and watching the bricks he hauls and installs become walls and roofs of new homes.
“It’s hard; it’s 10 to 11 hours a day in the cold and the sun. And I do it to support my family because, since my first daughter was born, it has radically changed my life,” he said.
“I regret my mistakes a thousand times over,” the informant said. “If I had come to this country when I was young, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation.”
An earlier version of this story was first published in Noticias Telemundo.
