Another deported Honduran drug trafficker returns to San Francisco and continues drug trafficking in latest blow to U.S. Attorney’s ‘fast track’ sentencing scheme
A Honduran drug dealer sentenced to a few weeks in jail before being deported at the end of 2023 made a remarkable return to San Francisco federal courthouse today, where he was accused of returning to the city and resuming narcotics trafficking.
Jose Flores was pulled over on the Bay Bridge by an eagle-eyed highway patrol officer who was concerned to see that Flores’ Honda Civic had tinted forward windows and an expired registration.
During the ensuing traffic stop a K9, ‘Sully’, detected the presence of drugs, which led to his handler finding cocaine and heroin packaged for sale inside the car. Although Flores had a Honduran identity card in a false name, it quickly became clear that he was already well known to authorities.
Police say Flores confessed that he was traveling to San Francisco where, he said, he was to hand the drugs he was carrying to a third party in exchange for payment.
This morning U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson remanded Flores to custody until June 20. He faces one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine.
On November 29 2023 Flores had been found with methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine after being seen making drug sales in the city’s Tenderloin district.
He was immediately dealt with in U.S. District Court as part of federal prosecutors’ then-nascent “fast track” program — which encouraged defendants to rapidly admit guilt in exchange for almost immediate release into ICE custody and deportation. 16 days after his arrest Flores pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine before U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson, who promptly signed an order releasing him from U.S. Marshals custody ahead of his being handed over to ICE.
“Mr Flores is looking forward to returning to Honduras mainly to reunite with his youngest daughter,” defense attorney Tamara Crepet told the court in her December 2023 sentencing memorandum.
Flores’ return is hardly the first time that deported Hondurans have promptly waltzed straight back into the U.S. after receiving a breathtakingly lenient sentence — and red-faced federal prosecutors, who insisted that the threat of future punishment would dissuade all from returning, will presumably be looked for tools beyond the ailing ‘fast track’ program to get to grips with the issue.
Government attorneys already faced an uphill struggle persuading some judges that their lenient approach would pay dividends. Last year one told a skeptical judge William Alsup that the drug dealer before him would have a “penalty hanging over his head” if he came back to the country.
“If — he ought to have a penalty now,” exclaimed the astonished judge.
The scheme was conjured up by federal prosecutors after San Francisco officials, having tied both hands behind their own backs, claimed they were incapable of addressing the fentanyl crisis which erupted and metastasized, entirely predictably, as a consequence of their inertia.
If Flores had not been dealt with as a ‘fast track’ case, his federal guideline sentence would have been between two and two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
Any decision on whether to revamp or replace the fast track program will be in the hands of Craig Missakian, the newly-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.
Though his legal credentials in California are impeccable, Missakian’s MAGA bona fides are up for debate — and so is whether, as a consequence, he makes it through any Senate confirmation un-Loomered. At the very least, DOJ leadership will surely be casting their eyes over their local officials’ milquetoast stance on illegal alien drug dealers and assessing Missakian’s willingness to implement the Trump administration’s mandate to ramp up enforcement against foreigners who commit further crimes.
The case continues.
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