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S.F.’s ‘sanctuary’ role criticized

City refused to hold illegal immigrant accused in killing

The Columbian
Published: July 7, 2015, 12:00am
3 Photos
Father Cameron Faller, second left, of Restorative Justice Ministry conducts a vigil Monday for Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco.
Father Cameron Faller, second left, of Restorative Justice Ministry conducts a vigil Monday for Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco. Steinle was gunned down while out for an evening stroll at Pier 14 with her father and a family friend Wednesday. Photo Gallery

SAN FRANCISCO — The killing of a woman at a sightseeing pier has brought criticism down on this liberal city because the Mexican man under arrest was in the U.S. illegally, had been deported five times and was out on the streets after San Francisco officials disregarded a request from immigration authorities to keep him locked up.

San Francisco is one of dozens of cities and counties across the country that do not fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The city goes so far as to promote itself as a “sanctuary” for people in the country illegally.

In a jailhouse interview with a TV station, Francisco Sanchez, the 45-year-old repeat drug offender arrested in the shooting Wednesday of Kathryn Steinle, appeared to confirm that he came to the city because of its status as a sanctuary.

Prosecutors on Monday charged Sanchez with murder as San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi strongly defended his office’s release of Sanchez and pointed the finger back at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He said the federal agency should have issued an arrest warrant for Sanchez.

“ICE knew that he had been deported five times,” Mirkarimi said. “You would have thought he met a threshold that he required a court order or a warrant. They did not do that.”

The case has prompted a flurry of criticism from the ICE officials, politicians and commenters on social media, all of whom portrayed the slaying as a preventable tragedy.

“Most of the blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of the San Francisco sheriff, because his department had custody of him and made the choice to let him go without notifying ICE,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which wants tougher immigration enforcement.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, blamed sanctuary practices and the Obama administration, saying: “The tragic murder of Kate Steinle once again underscores the need to end these reckless policies.”

Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement saying city policy was never intended to protect “repeat, serious and violent felons.” He asked for federal and local agencies to review what happened.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney who is running for U.S. Senate, cautioned that when it comes to immigration, “our policy should not be informed by our collective outrage about one man’s conduct.”

Many other San Francisco politicians stayed quiet as mourners held a vigil at Pier 14 on the downtown waterfront, where Steinle, 32, was gunned down Wednesday, seemingly at random, during an evening stroll with her father and a family friend. She had recently moved to San Francisco.

Sanchez has been deported five times, most recently in 2009, and has seven felony convictions, four involving drug charges, according to ICE.

From jail, Sanchez told a KGO-TV reporter in a mix of Spanish and English that he found the gun wrapped in a T-shirt while sitting on a bench at the pier.

“So I picked it up and … it started to fire on its own,” Sanchez said, adding that he heard three shots go off.

While many cities have scaled back cooperation with ICE, few have gone as far as San Francisco.

For more than two decades, San Francisco has been considered a sanctuary for people in the U.S. illegally.

The city’s sanctuary law prohibits city employees from helping federal authorities with immigration investigations or arrests unless required by law or warrant. The ordinance does not prohibit local law enforcement from informing ICE that they’ve arrested someone in the country illegally for a felony offense or who has prior felony convictions.

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