In San Francisco, "Hondos" control the drug trade

In San Francisco Honduran rule the fentanyl market
  --extensively edited from an article in City Journal

San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, 3 a.m: The sidewalks are littered with trash and human feces. Addicts are slumped over, barely conscious.  Homeless encampments line block after block.

Drug dealers are everywhere.  Most are "migrants" (to use the careful, dainty nomenclature of the Democrat media and politicians) from Honduras--"Hondos"--who now control the local drug trade.  Night after night they turn the Tenderloin into a lucrative drug market.  And the Democrats who rule that city do nothing.

The Dem-ruled city’s drug policies--always called "progressive" by the local Democrat-fellating Media--have allowed drug gangs to take over an entire neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, tightening Democrat rule, poisoning the down-and-out and bringing Third World conditions to one of America’s wealthiest cities.

In the Tenderloin, the Hondos rule.

In a radio interview in 2022 then-San Francisco mayor London Breed slipped, saying “a lot” of the city’s drug dealers were Honduran.  As anyone could have predicted, her comments sparked a backlash from Latino activists who denounced her remarks as “xenophobic and racist.”  She was soon pressured into a public apology.

For the slow-witted: Democrat pols should know better than to blame foreigners for selling drugs in their cities.  Just not done, citizen!

But Breed was right:  Gangs of migrants, primarily from Honduras, supplied by Mexican cartels, run fentanyl sales in San Francisco.  Even the Democrat-fellating San Francisco Chronicle admitted that in 2023. 

Last year even the Harvard Law Review wrote that “nearly all” low-level fentanyl and meth dealers prosecuted by the feds were “Honduran men without legal status in the United States.”

For slow readers "without legal status" means illegal alien invaders.  But of course duh Hahvahd Law Review can't say it in those words, cuz too many Americans would understand it.

JJ Smith is a lifelong San Francisco resident who owns a café in the Tenderloin.  His brother died from a fentanyl overdose.  Since then, Smith has documented life in the Tenderloin and has tried to help get addicts into treatment.  He says the situation is worse than ever. 

He knows the Hondos well.

In 2023, Smith said that he saw a group of Hondos selling drugs in front of a school. He approached them and said they shouldn’t sell there.  They responded by beating him, including cutting him on the top of his head with a machete.

That same year Smith says he saw a “Hondo” hack another man to death with a machete.  The killer was never arrested or prosecuted, and is still selling drugs on the street.

Dealers say Mexican drug cartels send the Hondos to San Francisco where they quickly start selling product. 

Rational, thoughtful people (never Democrats) quickly realize something's wrong here:  Since every local knows about the open-air drug sales, the cops surely do too.  And if so, since it's both illegal and hugely destructive, why do city leaders--all Democrat--allow it to continue?

Great question.  My guess would be the same answer as in corrupt Dem-ruled eastern cities going back a century: payoffs, a.k.a. bribes.  But the unholy alliance between illegal "activists" and the Democrat-ruled Media has now made bribes unnecessary: Dem pols know any effort to crack own on sale of illegal drugs will have a thousand  violent foreign and minority-U.S. demonstrators in the streets in hours--something Dem pols aren't willing to endure.
 
In short, because of the so-called “progressive” policies of all Dem rulers.  For years Dem-ruled cities have ignored drug sales, and that seems to be fine with Dem voters.  The pols refuse to cooperate with ICE, making it almost impossible to deport illegal-aliens caught selling drugs.

Same for trying to remove homeless encampments  or ending giving free needles and syringes to IV drug users.  So this is the predictable result of deliberate choices by Dem rulers (though City Journal is careful not to say that).

The San Francisco police department gave us a copy of its orders on immigration enforcement. Officers aren't allowed to ask anyone if they're a U.S. citizen, and are barred from honoring ICE "detainer" requests. 

JJ Smith says arrested drug dealers are back on the streets within hours, usually with no fine or charges. 

Predictably, Democrat tolerance of drug dealers has helped drive an explosion of overdose deaths. In 2023 the city’s rate of overdose deaths was more than double the national average. 

In 2023, then-mayor Breed declared a state of emergency and asked the federal government for help, and federal officials began arresting drug dealers. 

You might think this sounds like progress, but so far the handful of Hondos deported for selling drugs have quickly returned to the city and are back on their usual corners.  In 2023, Jairo Mendoza Erazo, a Honduran, was deported after pleading guilty to a fentanyl charge. By early 2024, he was back in San Francisco and was arrested again, allegedly in possession of both cocaine and heroin. In another case, Anderson Medina was arrested and deported in 2023 after he and an accomplice were allegedly found with more than 350 grams of fentanyl. In 2025, he was reportedly arrested again—two blocks from the site of his arrest two years earlier in San Francisco.

The Harvard Law Review concluded, "A free trip home with no prison time is no deterrence.” 

In 2024 Daniel Lurie ran for mayor as supposedly a "moderate Democrat, promised to restore order to the embattled city.  He took office in January of 2025, but despite a flurry of press releases, nothing has changed.

San Francisco has devoted billions to cutting homelessness and drug sales.  It hasn't worked, because he doesn't dare allow cops to cooperate with ICE, or help deport illegals.  And deported drug sellers still immediately come back.  Without any punishment or penalty, there's no incentive to NOT sell drugs.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/tenderloin-san-francisco-drugs-gangs?skip=1