A quartet of alleged drug dealers described as “Oakland residents” by SFPD acting chief Paul Yep, but whose group profile is identical to that of illegal alien Hondurans, passed through the revolving door at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice on multiple occasions before their arrests again last week, a review of court records reveals.
One, Daniela Hernandez-Barahona, was last arrested four months ago but was free having posted bail – presumably using as collateral the ill-gotten gains she admits amassing from her daily drug dealing in the city’s Tenderloin district.
Yep announced her arrest, along with that of Jhonatan Santiago Diaz, Gustavo Chavez-Meza and Delvin Barahona-Centeno, on June 20. Jail records show that Chavez-Meza and Diaz were booked into San Francisco County Jail overnight on June 18.
According to a press release officers recovered $52,589 in cash plus five pounds of fentanyl and other narcotics during a search of the suspects’ Oakland address.
The arrests appear to offer a further example of the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ approach adopted by Yep, his boss Daniel Lurie, district attorney Brooke Jenkins and judges – all of whom turn a blind eye to drug traffickers’ illegal presence in the U.S. to signal their virtue to other elites.
Court records show that Santiago Diaz is a monolingual Spanish speaker and that both Hernandez-Barahona and Chavez-Meza require a Spanish interpreter in court.
Daniela Hernandez-Barahona had last been arrested by SFPD on February 4 2025 after a three week investigation in which police tracked her traveling to and from the Tenderloin from Oakland to deal drugs. During a search of her home officers found nearly a pound of fentanyl, over $13,000 cash, a digital scale, packaging materials and cell phones.
Prosecutors say that Hernandez-Barahona confessed that most days she went to and from San Francisco to sell fentanyl at 6th and Mission Streets, where she made $300-$400 a night.
She told police that she used money made from fentanyl sales to pay her bills.
At her arraignment three days after her arrest she pleaded not guilty to three felony drugs charges. Judge Gerardo Sandoval set bail at $50,000 and Hernandez-Barahona was released that day after a bail bondsman lodged a bond with the Sheriff’s Office.
Per the bond company’s usual terms that bond will have required a $5,000 premium which, almost inevitably, will have come in one way or another from the illicit proceeds from the defendant’s drug dealing.
Jhonatan Santiago Diaz had last been arrested on March 27 2024 after police spied him selling drugs one block from San Francisco federal courthouse. Prosecutors say he had active bench warrants for failure to appear in all of his three other pending drugs cases.
He was found with fentanyl, oxycodone and methamphetamine.
Santiago Diaz had previously been arrested on July 10 2023, after SFPD saw him selling drugs, and found him with fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine. He was arrested again 15 days later after selling fentanyl to an undercover officer at the intersection of 9th and Mission Streets. He was arrested again 23 days after that by a highway patrol officer who found him with multiple drugs including fentanyl.
Gustavo Chavez-Meza was arrested on July 8 2023 for selling fentanyl in San Francisco. Four days later he was released by Superior Court Judge Victor Hwang on condition that he wear an ankle monitor. This was over the objections of prosecutors who pointed out that he was already on bail in two other pending San Francisco drug cases.
As of this morning it was unclear when the defendants will appear in court in their most recent cases. If they stay in state court they will be released when the matter recedes from public attention and they will return to fentanyl dealing. If a federal prosecution is initiated they may eventually be deported but, as with so many other deportees, will likely come straight back.
Yep’s bizarre formulation to describe the arrestees – or rather to avoid describing the arrestees – is a consequence of self-imposed rules which notionally forbid police from cooperating with immigration enforcement. That manifests itself here as a preposterous refusal to see or address the obvious role foreign national drug dealers play in peddling misery and death on the streets of San Francisco.
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