MSNBC
By Amanda Sakuma
July 6, 2015
The
fallout from a seemingly random fatal shooting at a crowded tourist
spot in San Francisco last week has ignited a national debate over the
city’s decades-old tradition
of offering safe haven to undocumented immigrants. Now used as fodder
in political rallying cries on immigration, the shooting mounts pressure
on these so-called “sanctuary cities” – municipalities that have openly
defied federal immigration policies and taken
a more welcoming tact toward undocumented immigrants.
San
Francisco is one of the oldest such cities in the country, having
joined the movement in 1989 when city officials passed an ordinance
barring funds from being used
to enforce federal immigration law. Those protections have since been
expanded repeatedly, and in 2013, a new ordinance was signed into law
preventing local law enforcement from subjecting undocumented immigrants
to extended detention to allow time for federal
immigration agents to take the individual into custody. Under San
Francisco law, only such immigration “detainer” requests apply to people
with violent records.
This
was the case with Francisco Sanchez, a 45-year-old undocumented
immigrant with a lengthy rap sheet, who has been charged with killing
Kathryn Steinle on the San Francisco
pier last Wednesday. He had been booked previously into the San
Francisco County Jail in March on a 10-year-old drug warrant. Despite
his long rap sheet – Sanchez had been deported five times and had seven
felony convictions to his name, four of which were
on drug charges – he was released from custody.
A
spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement
that the agency had requested that local authorities hold Sanchez for
deportation, but the request
was denied.
“An
individual with a lengthy criminal history, who is now the suspect in a
tragic murder case, was released onto the street rather than being
turned over to ICE for deportation,”
spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. “We’re not asking local cops to do our
job. All we’re asking is that they notify us when a serious foreign
national criminal offender is being released to the street so we can
arrange to take custody.”
A
crucial pillar of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration
announced last November relied on enforcement mechanisms to root out
undocumented criminals and
make them a top priority for enforcement. ICE reported that 56% of all
immigrants deported in 2014 were previously convicted of a crime.
Agents
with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement have relied on state and
local law enforcement agencies to flag undocumented immigrants whom they
come into contact
with. “ICE detainers” are a formal written request to detain an
individual for an additional 48 hours to allow immigration agents
additional time to take over custody.
But
the dynamic became complicated for municipalities after a federal court
in Oregon last year ruled that immigration holds violated a women’s 4th
amendment right in
denying her due process. Unwilling to remain vulnerable to potential
lawsuits that could stack in the millions for unlawfully detaining an
immigrant without a warrant, sheriff’s departments around the country
have rejected ICE detainer requests and released
individuals. More than 300 municipalities across the country have since
signed onto the movement.
The
shooting played into 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s
repeated comments disparaging Mexican immigrants, claiming the incident
only proves him right.
“They
are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc. This was
evident just this week when, as an example, a young woman in San
Francisco was viciously killed
by a five-time deported Mexican with a long criminal record, who was
forced back into the United States because they didn’t want him in
Mexico,” Trump said in a statement Monday. “This is merely one of
thousands of similar incidents throughout the United States.”
What
remains unclear is the circumstances of this weekend’s tragedy in which
Steinle was seemingly a random victim. According to local news reports,
Sanchez says he was
in a drug-addled haze during the time of the shooting, claiming that he
reached for a T-shirt that was wrapped around a gun when the fatal shot
rang out.
“Then
suddenly I heard that boom boom, three times,” Sanchez said in the
interview with local TV station WABC-TV. “I’m feeling sorry for
everybody.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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