Tenderloin initiative called a dodge of sanctuary laws
Dozens of Honduran nationals have been arrested, deported for minor drug violations
SAN FRANCISCO >> A federal operation aimed at curbing drug sales in the Tenderloin has led to the deportation of dozens of people, mostly Honduran nationals, despite city and state sanctuary laws intended to prevent such immigration crackdowns, a review of hundreds of court records by the Bay Area News Group has found.
Known as the Federal Initiative for the Tenderloin, or FIT, the U. S. Attorney-led
operation has resulted in 230 federal prosecutions to date but also growing criticism that it is being used as a proxy for city police to engage in banned activities with immigration enforcement.
The court records show dozens of FIT cases followed the same pattern: an undocumented person is arrested for selling a small amount of drugs — perhaps $20 worth — to an undercover San Francisco police officer and ends up in federal custody, facing charges normally reserved for those who sell drugs by the ounce or the kilogram. At the case’s end, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, places a hold on the defendant and commences deportation proceedings.
“It’s an end-run around San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy. SFPD knows full well they are handing over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities for deportation,” San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said in a recent interview. “It’s essentially a way for SFPD to violate sanctuary city policy and to deprive people — many of whom are addicted to drugs — of the courtmandated programs we have available to us (in state court).”
San Francisco police have framed their involvement in the FIT as an effort to curb fatal overdoses, which have spiked over the last two years and show no signs of stopping. They did not respond to questions regarding allegations that the FIT was being used to circumvent sanctuary laws.
Asked for comment on Boudin’s remarks, an SFPD spokesman highlighted the law enforcement work the agency has conducted in the Tenderloin since January 2019, including more than 500 drug-related arrests this year, equipping officers with the means to prevent fentanyl overdoses, and cash seizures totaling more than $200,000 over the past six months.
“Our approach involves various aspects of the drug trade from street-level dealers to those who supply the dealers,” Sgt. Michael Andraychak said in an email. He added, “Most recently, the Department placed a marked SFPD command van in the Tenderloin, saturated the area with uniformed officers, and is working with other city agencies to focus resources in the same areas to help save lives.”
For decades, officials have employed strategy after strategy to end the cycle of addiction and crime that has consistently plagued the Tenderloin neighborhood, including controversial civil stay-away suits filed by the San Francisco city attorney against alleged drug sellers. The FIT is the latest attempt to prosecute away the problem, this time by filing federal charges against those arrested on suspicion of drug sales.
The Bay Area’s top federal prosecutor, U. S. Attorney Dave Anderson, said at a Dec. 16 news conference announcing the latest FIT bust — fentanyl trafficking charges against eight people — that a lack of “prosecution pressure” in San Francisco had made dangerous drugs cheap and easy to come by. The remark was widely taken as a knock on Boudin, who was elected in 2019 on a progressive reform platform.
“I feel like the Tenderloin is a place that needs that help because it is a neighborhood of young families, children, the elderly and people who maybe can’t afford other places in San Francisco. They deserve the benefits of law enforcement,” Anderson said in an interview. He later added, “I personally have been working in the Tenderloin for more than 20 years off and on. I can tell you from my own personal experience that the level of lawlessness openly exhibited has never been worse.”
Still, many FIT cases appear to target those lowest on the drug trafficking chain: street-level dealers, who by estimates articulated in court filings, make as little as $50 a day selling drugs. According to records in numerous FIT cases, Tenderloin drug sellers often live in the East Bay and are bused to and from the neighborhood each day by the very people supplying them with drugs to sell. Some are recruited out of homeless shelters with promises of housing, said Daisy Gavarrete, a social worker in San Francisco who said she has witnessed the recruitment firsthand.
Shilpi Agarwal, legal-policy codirector of litigation at the ACLU, said her office sees similar patterns as it did in 2013, when it sued San Francisco over an SFPD and Drug Enforcement Administration operation in the Tenderloin. In that suit — which was settled last February — the ACLU identified 37 people it claimed were targeted for arrest and federal prosecution because they were Black.
“Now we’re seeing the same thing again except this time they’re all Honduran nationals,” Agarwal said. “With the (2013) case, we believed it was good oldfashioned racism, and in this case we believe it might be a deliberate effort to get these low-level offenders into ICE detention and using these low-level arrests as a guise to do that.”
San Francisco has two sanctuary laws, including one passed in 2013 that prohibits authorities from alerting ICE to an undocumented person’s jail release date or complying with ICE deportation holds on an incarcerated person. A similar state law, Senate Bill 54, took effect in 2017.
“You have a deliberate relationship between the (federal prosecutors) and ICE that would be prohibited under sanctuary laws if these cases were prosecuted by the state,” Agarwal added. “I think it’s a very deliberate and problematic thwarting of the local will.”
Anderson said his office never takes a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, or any similar factor into account when deciding whether to file criminal charges.
“If there’s any type of racial distribution that the ACLU is perceiving it’s a consequence of self-selection, not prosecutorial selection,” he said.
The Bay Area News Group identified 46 FIT cases in which the defendants were placed in ICE holds and marked for deportation, according to court records, but defense attorneys familiar with the operation say the total number is likely much higher. Of those, 38 originated as arrests by San Francisco undercover police officers, who bought around $20 worth of drugs from the defendants, court records show.
Almost all of them involved Honduran nationals, whose biographies are summarized in court records before they’re sentenced. In those filings, their attorneys describe each defendant’s similar background: stories of childhoods spent in shacks or mud huts without running water, or dangerous journeys to the United States to escape violence or extreme poverty, are common.
“Basically what’s happening here is a creation of a deportation pipeline,” said Sarah Lee, a community advocate with the Asian Law Caucus. She later added, “People who are not citizens are basically punished twice; in the legal system and in the immigration system.”
At last week’s news conference, representatives from several federal law enforcement agencies, as well as San Francisco police, said the FIT will continue until authorities achieve their goal of ridding the Tenderloin of drug buyers and sellers, whom Anderson said come from all over the East Bay, essentially putting the residents of the Tenderloin under siege.
“We do not intend to take our foot off the gas,” DEA assistant special agent in charge Toby Schwartz said.