Machine-gun-toting Honduran fentanyl dealer, arrested again for San Francisco fentanyl dealing, skates with six-month sentence
A Honduran given a six-month sentence after being found with fentanyl, heroin and a machine gun in San Francisco’s Tenderloin in 2024 received another six-month sentence today, this time at the city’s federal courthouse, after selling fentanyl to an undercover SFPD officer this year.
Angel Velasquez, 20, was arrested on the evening of March 4 near 116 Turk Street. He had sold fentanyl to the undercover and was subsequently found to have more fentanyl packaged for sale. The U.S. Attorney’s Office took over the prosecution and dealt with it as a ‘fast-track’ case.
This morning U.S. District Judge James Donato imposed the six-month term, after which Velasquez will be handed over to immigration officials for deportation.
“I am very sorry for the mistake I made,” Velasquez told the judge via a Spanish interpreter. “I understand everything. The one thing I wish the most is to be with my family, to be back in my country and to find a job. I can promise you that what happened in the past will not happen again.”
Two years earlier the illegal alien was arrested for selling drugs and had a machine gun in his satchel. He ended up pleading guilty to a single felony drug dealing charge and was given, in effect, a time-served sentence of 172 days in jail by Judge Linda Colfax.
Later, instead of having his probation revoked, he was granted ‘mental health diversion’ and a drug court placement by Judge Michael Begert.
“In addition to [the machine gun] incident,” wrote federal prosecutor Maya Karwande in a sentencing memo, “between January 4 2023 and September 27 2024, the defendant was arrested four times in San Francisco for possession of a controlled substance for sale. None of those arrests resulted in convictions.”
Donato is the only judge on the federal bench in Northern California who refuses to countenance the month-or-so terms that ‘fast-track’ deals usually bring. Prosecutors and defense attorneys no longer bother proposing them in his courtroom and instead arrive asking for more realistic terms. Had Velasquez’s case been assigned to any other judge, he would almost certainly have received an even more lenient disposition.
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