Honduran drug dealer, deported from San Francisco, returned immediately and resumed dealing drugs, court told
A Honduran drug dealer deported after serving two weeks in prison for peddling fentanyl in San Francisco in 2023 came straight back and went undetected for nearly a year before being caught again with drugs packaged for sale and thousands of dollars in cash, a court was told today.
Jairo Mendoza Erazo pleaded guilty to one count of illegal reentry following removal and admitted violating the terms of his supervised release before U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley at the city’s federal courthouse.
Prosecutor Jeffrey Bornstein told the court that Mendoza, 34, was detained by officers from Alameda County’s drug task force on December 19 2024 and found with heroin, cocaine and $5,991 in cash.
He pleaded no contest to a felony drug transportation charge and received a 220 day sentence before being transferred back into federal custody.
Mendoza admitted coming back to the U.S. in early 2024, Bornstein said.
Per the terms of a plea agreement, the court was told, Mendoza would receive a 12-month sentence for the illegal entry charge plus a consecutive 24-month term for supervised release violations.
Mendoza’s deportation followed his arrest by FBI agents on October 16 2023, barely two blocks from the courthouse, after they saw him and an accomplice selling drugs on the street.
Agents found him with 95 grams of fentanyl, 45 grams of heroin and 33 grams of 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.
“Mr Mendoza is now adjudged guilty of those offenses,” said Judge Corley in courtroom eight this morning. She told Mendoza that she would not decide whether or not to accept the plea agreement until the date of sentencing, which she set for October 15 2025.
It 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.
It is unclear whether newly minted U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Craig Missakian will retool the ailing scheme, which has manifestly failed to address the scourge of illegal alien narcotics sellers – mainly from Honduras – that plague San Francisco’s Tenderloin and SOMA districts.
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