SAN FRANCISCO — A 22-year-old Oakland woman who was making regular trips to the Tenderloin to sell fentanyl, occasionally bringing her teenaged sister or young child, has been sentenced to nearly two years in federal prison, court records show.
Juleisy Moncada-Flores was arrested during an undercover San Francisco police investigation last year, after showing up to a drug deal with her 2-year-old daughter in tow, according to court records. The arrest quickly made headlines, and prosecutors added to the outrage by revealing that she’d also been regularly brining her 16-year-old sister to “work” in the Bay Area’s most prominent open air drug market, and that the two conducted drug deals together.
“Both have prior arrests for state narcotics offenses in San Francisco and continued to sell drugs together until their respective arrests. Officers began engaging in controlled purchases of narcotics from them,” prosecutors said in court filings, referring to both the teen and Moncada-Flores.
But Moncada-Flores’ lawyer says there is a more sympathetic side to the story, one that the U.S. Attorney’s office has also acknowledged. A Honduran native who witnessed her grandfather’s murder at age 11 in her home country, Moncada-Flores became a mother at 15 and had her second child at age 19, before being arrested two years later in this case, a defense sentencing motion says.
“When this offense occurred, she was mired in an abusive relationship with a drug dealer who screamed at her, beat her, and put her and her children’s lives at risk by stealing from his suppliers and leaving Ms. Moncada-Flores on the hook for it,” Assistant Federal Public Defender Angela Chuang wrote in the sentencing memo. “Because of everything she has been through, she qualifies for immigration relief in the form of a T-visa as a victim of human trafficking, the application for which will be filed shortly after this memorandum and will be pending by the time of sentencing.”
Prosecutors wrote a sentencing brief stating that they agree she regrets selling drugs, and acknowledge that her “difficult and traumatic” past was a contributing factor. They asked for a 35-month prison sentence, writing in court filings that Moncada-Flores “can be rehabilitated and has likely been sufficiently deterred from making the same choice again.”
“Nevertheless, Moncada-Flores engaged in drug dealing. However difficult her circumstances, she had a choice, just like the many others like her who came from similar backgrounds who chose not to turn to criminality,” the government sentencing memo says. “Even as she sought to support herself and her family, her decision to hawk drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl in the Tenderloin was a selfish one that added to the persistent and devastating misery in our communities.”
U.S. District James Donato handed down the sentence at a court hearing last month. Moncada-Flores gets credit for the year she spent behind bars while her case was pending, records show. She will be placed on supervised release after her sentence is completed.
