12 months for Honduran who ran away instead of reporting to prison after Tenderloin drug dealing conviction
A Honduran fentanyl trafficker who spent a year on the lam after a trusting judge allowed him to self-report to prison to start a one-year sentence, only to see him run away instead, was given an additional 12 months today by the same judge at San Francisco federal courthouse.
Illegal alien Kevin Mejia earlier pleaded guilty to failure to surrender.
“I don’t see any indication that this defendant takes any personal responsibility for his conduct,” said U.S. District Judge James Donato this morning, rejecting a defense bid for a six-month sentence. “A six month term would be throwing sand in the face of the federal criminal system.”
Mejia was originally convicted of aiding and abetting the distribution of fentanyl. He commuted from his Richmond home to San Francisco’s Tenderloin where he was spied selling drugs on multiple occasions by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in early 2023. When he was arrested on June 9 2023, law enforcement found fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine in his home along with more than $4,000 cash. He won bail six days later.
Sentenced to a year in custody, Judge Donato allowed him to self-report to prison. Just days before his reporting deadline, he cut off his ankle monitor and absconded.
Federal agents eventually tracked Mejia to Portland, OR and he was captured there in March 2025. Inside his new apartment they found a gun, cash and drugs.
The court was told that Mejia is an illegal alien who first entered the U.S. in approximately 2016.
“[The] defendant received the benefit of the doubt over and over again,” wrote assistant U.S. attorney Nicholas Parker in a sentencing memorandum. “[H]e was on pretrial release for the duration of that case in view of, among other things, his relatively substantial ties to the Bay Area; he received a significantly below-guidelines sentence; and he was permitted to self-surrender to serve that sentence. The defendant then rewarded the Court’s benevolence by betraying its trust.”
Today in courtroom 11 of San Francisco federal courthouse, Mejia, speaking through an interpreter, told the court he was sorry, that he had done his time, and that he wanted to be deported.
“You didn’t do your time,” observed Judge Donato. “You ran away. You didn’t do any time.”
The judge imposed an additional 12 month term, to be served consecutively to the 12 months and a day sentence in Mejia’s original case. Donato conceded that this had been a “very lenient” sentence.
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