Deported Honduran fentanyl dealer who returned to sell again gets 36 months
A Honduran drug dealer, deported after serving two weeks in jail for peddling fentanyl in San Francisco in 2023, who came straight back and dealt drugs for nearly a year before being arrested with narcotics and thousands of dollars in cash, was sentenced to 36 months’ imprisonment today.
Jairo Mendoza Erazo, 35, earlier pleaded guilty to one count of illegal reentry following removal and admitted violating the terms of his supervised release.
“It was an egregious breach of trust, especially given the enormous break he was given,” observed U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley this morning at the city’s federal courthouse.
Mendoza had been deported in November 2023 following his arrest by FBI agents on October 16 2023, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district , after they saw him and an accomplice selling drugs.
Agents found him with 95 grams of fentanyl, 45 grams of heroin and cocaine packaged for sale.
Two weeks later he pleaded guilty before Judge Corley to possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, given a time served sentence and handed over to immigration authorities for deportation.
He was deported three weeks later, on November 22 2023. It was his second removal.
Mendoza was then detained by Alameda County’s drug task force in December 19 2024 and found with heroin, cocaine and $5,991 in cash.
He pleaded no contest to a felony drug transportation charge in state court and received a 220 day sentence. He was transferred back to federal custody on April 15 2025 to answer allegations that he violated his probation and a new charge of illegally returning to the U.S.
Mendoza admitted to returning to the U.S. in early 2024.
Today in courtroom eight of San Francisco federal courthouse Mendoza was sentenced to 12 months for illegal reentry and 24 months for violating the terms of his supervised release in his earlier case, each to run consecutively.
“I know I told you last time,” Judge Corley told him, “yet you came back and did it again.”
“My job is to protect the public here and I don’t know how I can trust you because you came right back and dealt those drugs again after being given an enormous break from the U.S. government.”
“Believe me,” begged Mendoza through a Spanish interpreter, “please, please believe me that I will never come back.”
His attorney claimed that Mendoza has a “significant other” in Honduras and that the two were planning to make a life together there.
A dubious Judge Corley, describing the sentence proposed by prosecutors and defense attorneys pursuant to a plea agreement as “just sufficient”, and noting the time Mendoza had served in state custody, was ultimately persuaded to impose the 36 month term.
Mendoza’s case is the latest instance of a deported fentanyl trafficker promptly returning after receiving lenient treatment under federal prosecutors’ fast track program – which, they claimed, would ensure they would not return.
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