New York Times
By Jennifer Medina and Julia Preston
July 8, 2015
With
San Francisco’s immigration policies drawing criticism from Democrats
and Republicans alike, Mayor Edward M. Lee said Wednesday that he would
speak to federal officials
about how the city could participate in a new Obama administration
deportation program, after a Mexican felon who had been deported five
times was charged with murdering a 32-year-old woman, Kathryn Steinle,
as she walked on a tourist pier in the city last
week.
The
mayor’s comments, on KQED Radio, came after he braved a week of outrage
over the city’s longstanding sanctuary policies for undocumented
immigrants, which have curtailed
most cooperation between the local police and federal immigration
agents.
Mr.
Lee “has asked his staff to begin researching how we could participate
in the program while still upholding the laws and values of our
sanctuary policy,” Christine
Falvey, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said in a telephone interview. “He
thinks we absolutely should look into this program if we can
participate and still protect all of our residents.”
San
Francisco’s decision to let the Mexican felon, Juan Francisco
Lopez-Sanchez, out of jail without alerting the federal authorities has
been castigated by Republicans
like Donald J. Trump and questioned by Democrats, including Hillary
Rodham Clinton and California’s two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer
and Dianne Feinstein. Jeb Bush, at a Republican campaign event in New
Hampshire on Wednesday, said that sanctuary cities
should be eliminated.
Ms.
Feinstein wrote a letter to Mr. Lee urging him to cooperate with
officials from the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigrations
and Customs Enforcement arm,
to participate in a new federal program that focuses on criminal
convicts and asks the police to notify federal agents when those
immigrants will be released.
“The
tragic death of Ms. Steinle could have been avoided,” Ms. Feinstein
said in a statement. “I strongly believe that an undocumented
individual, convicted of multiple
felonies and with a detainer request from I.C.E., should not have been
released. We should focus on deporting convicted criminals, not setting
them loose on our streets.”
“I
agree,” Mr. Lee said in a radio interview on Wednesday, responding to
Ms. Feinstein. He said he would speak with senior Homeland Security
officials this week to explore
how the city could participate in the new federal deportation program.
Also
on Wednesday, officials said that the gun they say that Mr.
Lopez-Sanchez used came from a federal Bureau of Land Management law
enforcement agent. It was stolen
from the ranger’s vehicle in June while he was in San Francisco on
official business, a spokesman for the agency said. The theft was
immediately reported to the San Francisco police.
The
weapon, a .40-caliber handgun, was found in San Francisco Bay by police
divers soon after Ms. Steinle was shot and killed while she was walking
along Pier 14, a popular
tourist attraction, with her father and a friend. Mr. Lopez-Sanchez,
56, pleaded not guilty in court on Tuesday and is being held on $5
million bail.
The police used the serial number on the gun to track it to the federal agent.
San
Francisco is a so-called sanctuary city, where undocumented immigrants
without criminal records are generally protected from federal
deportation agents. But “the sanctuary
city ordinance was never designed to harbor repeat serious offenders,”
Mr. Lee said on KQED. “If there is a gap, let’s close that gap.”
Mr.
Lee, who often points out that his parents were Chinese immigrants, has
faced a week of outraged questions, including from many residents, over
the city’s sanctuary
policies. He placed some blame for the mishandling of Mr. Lopez-Sanchez
on the county sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, who released him on April 15
without notifying federal agents.
“I
think a simple phone call would have done the trick,” Mr. Lee said. “I
think the sheriff dropped the ball there.” He said more direct
communication with federal agents
might be needed. If San Francisco joined the Homeland Security program,
it would be a reversal of the city’s longstanding reluctance to
cooperate with the federal immigration authorities.
Of
the undocumented immigrants living in the United States, roughly one
quarter are in California, more than any other state in the country.
Immigrants account for roughly
30 percent of the state population, and Latinos now outnumber whites as
the state’s largest ethnic group.
California
legislators have passed several laws designed to integrate undocumented
immigrants living in the state, including a law that is meant to
protect undocumented
immigrants without a criminal history from deportations.
Gov.
Jerry Brown, who initially vetoed the legislation and later signed an
amended version, has so far not spoken out about the shooting. In a
statement, his spokesman,
Evan Westrup, said that “California law vests authority for cases of
this kind within the sound discretion of local authority,” adding, “A
tragedy such as this warrants a careful review of what happened, how the
applicable rules were interpreted and what changes
might be called for.”
On
Tuesday, Ms. Boxer, who has announced her retirement, called for a
review of the state’s detention policies in the wake of Ms. Steinle’s
murder. “For decades, I have
supported deporting violent criminals, and I have always believed that
sanctuary should not be given to felons,” Ms. Boxer said. “I have
reached out to Governor Brown to ask whether state law was followed in
this case, and if so, whether the law needs to be
strengthened to ensure that a tragedy like this never happens again.”
On
Tuesday, Ms. Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, said that
San Francisco officials had “made a mistake,” adding in an interview on
CNN that she had “absolutely
no support for a city that ignores the strong evidence that should be
acted on.”
And
earlier this week, Mr. Trump, a Republican presidential candidate,
seized on the Lopez-Sanchez case as proof of his assertion that scores
of immigrants coming from
Mexico are “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.”
While
many public officials in the state have emphasized that they support
deportation of criminals, there has been no call for a wholesale
revamping of the state’s policies.
Instead, the State Senate plans to vote on a resolution Thursday
condemning Mr. Trump.
“We’re
not going to allow the scapegoating or have the deplorable actions by
one deranged individual stop our effort to include the millions of
hard-working immigrants
who call California home,” said Ricardo Lara, a state senator from Los
Angeles and a former chairman of the Legislature’s Latino caucus. “These
are two very different things, and we’re not going to let this deter
years of progress we have made here.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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