(Alan Wooten, The Center Square) Following prison sentences of a combined 24 years for drug charges, two Hondurans illegally in America will be deported, federal prosecutors in North Carolina say.
Their arrest, sentencing and eventual deportation is the example of an executive order from the president executed to protect Americans’ public safety from drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
According to a June 2024 publishing in the International Journal of Drug Policy, the estimated annual costs for opioid use disorder on North Carolina taxpayers – using 2022 numbers most recently available at the time – were $749 million split 53% to healthcare, 36% to criminal justice, 7% to lost tax revenue and 4% to child welfare. A next-step estimate of lost economic productivity, business expenses and statistical loss of life pushes the annual cost to $117 billion.
Olver Anacleto Amador-Calderon, 24, and Alexander Josue Viatoro-Arita, 22, were sentenced to 14 and 10 years, respectively, for trafficking fentanyl. Each pleaded guilty for conspiracy and possession charges.
“These defendants entered our country illegally and fueled the distribution of deadly fentanyl while armed with stolen firearms,” said Russ Ferguson, leading prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of North Carolina. “They will serve time in an American prison before they are deported, and we will continue our fight to completely eliminate fentanyl from our community.”
The Homeland Security Task Force led the investigation. That’s the product of an executive order from second-term Republican President Donald Trump in 2025 that established what is considered a whole of government interagency, led jointly by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI. It brings with them state and local law enforcement with a goal to dismantle transnational criminal organizations, drug cartels and human trafficking networks.
Amador-Calderon was in possession of a .380 caliber Titan pistol, and Viatoro-Arita a stolen 9mm Taurus pistol with part of the serial number obliterated, prosecutors say. Viatoro-Arita’s sale of 24.99 grams of fentanyl to an individual cooperating with lawmen led to the defendants’ hotel room and search turning up 330 grams of fentanyl, approximately $33,000 in cash and two ledgers documenting drug sales.
In December 2024 and January 2025, the ledgers showed $159,400 in transactions for 11.665 kilograms of fentanyl and just under 3.3 kilograms of methamphetamine, prosecutors say.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.
