Fast track flop: FIRST Honduran fentanyl dealer deported in federal scheme back in San Francisco
The first Honduran fentanyl dealer deported under a federal ‘fast track’ initiative to curb illegal alien drug traffickers in San Francisco will appear in a city courthouse again today – a return that underscores the collapse of federal enforcement efforts.
Candy Cardona-Zuniga was caught by DEA agents with 148 grams of fentanyl and 52 grams of heroin after they saw her making hand-to-hand drug sales in the city’s Tenderloin district on August 2 2023.
Just 28 days later, she pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who immediately imposed a ‘time served’ sentence and sent her for removal to Honduras. She was gone so quickly that neither the deputy public defender nor the assistant district attorney in her state drugs case realized she had gone when they appeared in San Francisco Superior Court the next week.
She will appear today before a magistrate judge at the city’s federal courthouse for an initial hearing.
Hers was the first instance of a ‘fast track’ prosecution by federal officials. The program aimed to round up Honduran dealers, quickly secure guilty pleas with the threat of lengthy sentences if convicted at trial, and hand them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in about a month.
The plan almost immediately provoked opposition from a handful of federal judges who – aghast at the lenient sentences they were being asked to give – refused to cooperate and insisted that the cases proceed in the normal way. They predicted that those deported would simply waltz back in to the U.S.
Cardona-Zuniga joins a substantial cohort of deportees who have returned and been rearrested – from Luis Zuniga-Cruz to Jairo Mendoza Erazo and from Kevin Ruiz-Antunez to Franklin Hernandez-Cruz.
Her return comes as President Donald Trump mulls sending National Guard troops to San Francisco to combat crime. Mayor Daniel Lurie says they are not needed and would not help.
It is not yet clear what charges Cardona-Zuniga faces.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian declined to comment on her return.
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