Honduran migrants working for Mexican cartels brazenly took over San Francisco’s drug market thanks to lax policies

Honduran migrants have taken over San Francisco’s drug market with the aid and blessing of Mexican cartels, according to a new report.

The Hondurans work on the front lines distributing to users, capitalizing on the lax immigration and crime policies of the California sanctuary city, the San Francisco Chronicle reported .

They operate brazen open-air markets in the in city’s notoriously blighted Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods, where they have squeezed competition out through their highly-coordinated organization and sheer numbers, according to the report.

The migrants often commute to their street-dealing posts via public transportation and “conduct business like they’re going to a job,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed told the outlet .

San Francisco is seen as a target for “Hondos,” a slang term for Honduran drug dealers, because of its lax policies stemming from bail reform and its “sanctuary city” designation, according to the report.

“[I]n San Francisco, it’s like you’re here in Honduras,” an anonymous dealer told the  Chronicle. “The law, because they don’t deport, that’s the problem … Many look for San Francisco because it’s a sanctuary city. You go to jail and you come out.”

San Francisco’s “City and County of Refuge” Ordinance , which makes the area a sanctuary city, largely prohibits city employees from assisting US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their investigations or efforts, and bars ICE from being able to step in after police have arrested a migrant.

The investigation found most of the migrants come from the same area, Siria Valley, in Honduras — where people typically earn $8 a day — and recruit others from their families or friendship circles to join them, because they feel they can trust them better.

They pay people smugglers — known as coyotes — to initially get them into the US then live in packed apartments and houses in the neighboring city of Oakland and traveling into San Francisco to do their dealing.

Mules working for the Mexican Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa Cartels are providing them with the narcotics, mostly laced with highly lethal fentanyl, which they then sell on the streets of Tenderloin and South of Market.

Dealers told the newspaper they would usually make around between $300 and $700 a day, although cuts from that have to go to street associates from their crew and back up the chain to the distributors.

Those working the streets and taking delivery of drug shipments say they do not know the people higher up the chain from the cartels, offering a level of protection to them and making the police’s job to trace back the drugs much harder.

Over 200 migrants from Honduras have been nabbed for selling drugs in San Francisco since the beginning of last year, the Chronicle found.

The community reportedly began to take over the drug market during the COVID shutdown, but would not have made such strides if not for the support Mexican cartels, Wade Shannon, former special agent-in-charge of the San Francisco field office of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, told the outlet.

“If [the cartels] decide to ever cut [the Hondurans] off, that’s the end of the game,” he reportedly said. “But I think they provide a value to the cartels there; they’re moving a lot of their product.”

Only six percent of those charged for dealing drugs between 2018 and 2022 have been convicted. The remainder are still being processed, or ended in plea deals with lesser charges, dismissals or diversion programs, the Chronicle found.

On average, the outlet found, jail sentences for drug dealing lasted 168 days.