New York Times
By Julia Preston
July 7, 2015
The
case of a Mexican laborer with a lengthy criminal record who was
charged on Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an American woman on a pier
in San Francisco has exposed
a gulf of mistrust and failed communication between the federal
authorities and the police in California over immigration enforcement.
The
man, most recently known as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, 56, pleaded
not guilty in Superior Court in San Francisco in the murder of Kathryn
Steinle, 32, who was strolling
last Wednesday with her father and a friend on Pier 14 near the Ferry
Building when she was struck in what the police described as a random
shooting. Mr. Lopez-Sanchez, whose criminal record includes seven felony
convictions, had been deported from the United
States five times, raising questions about why he was in the United
States.
Questions
were also raised late Tuesday about the gun used in the killing. A law
enforcement official confirmed local media reports that the serial
number showed the gun
belonged to a federal agent. The official declined to be identified
because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The
case immediately became fodder in the polarized debate over
immigration. Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, who
has been under fire for comments
about Mexican immigrants, pointed to the killing as “yet another
example of why we must secure our border immediately.” On Tuesday,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic presidential contender, said San
Francisco had “made a mistake.” And Senator Dianne Feinstein
of California, also a Democrat, called on the city to restore its
cooperation with the Obama administration in enforcing immigration laws.
The
lapse in the case of Mr. Lopez-Sanchez — also known as José Inez García
Zarate and several other names — did not occur at the border, legal
records show. After being
deported in June 2009, he tried to return three months later but was
stopped by agents at the crossing in Eagle Pass, Tex. He was then
prosecuted for a felony of illegal entry and served almost four years in
a federal prison in California.
When
he finished his sentence, the prison sent him to San Francisco on March
27, based on a warrant for a 20-year-old felony marijuana charge.
Within a day, a local court
dismissed the charges. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi of San Francisco said Mr.
Lopez-Sanchez stayed in jail for three weeks so the authorities could
verify that he was eligible for release. He was freed April 15.
At that point, communications between San Francisco and federal authorities broke down.
Federal
officials say that as soon as they learned of Mr. Lopez-Sanchez’s
transfer from federal prison to San Francisco, they issued a request to
Sheriff Mirkarimi to
notify them when he would be released. An order for his deportation was
ready.
“We
are just asking for a heads-up, a phone call,” said Gillian
Christensen, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also
known as ICE. “We did not hear
anything until the day this young woman was killed.”
A
San Francisco ordinance, passed in 2013, broadly restricts the police
from cooperating with immigration agents. City officials say the
so-called sanctuary law has helped
law enforcement by enhancing trust between the police and residents who
are immigrants without documents.
Sheriff
Mirkarimi said the city’s ordinance allowed him to respond to the
federal authorities only when he had a court order or warrant.
“They
had his rap sheet and they were well aware of our policies,” the
sheriff said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “The natural question is,
why wouldn’t they follow
through with a warrant for this suspect?”
He
said Ms. Steinle’s killing was “a horrible and senseless act that
requires ICE to really work with local governments in a way that
comports with local law.”
The
Obama administration has long struggled to shape an enforcement
strategy to deport convicted criminals like Mr. Lopez-Sanchez but avoid
the deportation of undocumented
immigrants arrested by the police for low-level offenses. In November,
President Obama said he would abandon a nationwide program known as
Secure Communities, which connected federal agents with local police.
Officials announced a new, less aggressive program,
but they have been slow to explain it to the police.
All
but a few California counties have adopted laws restricting cooperation
with federal agents, and the state enacted a law in 2014 — although it
would not have applied
to Mr. Lopez-Sanchez because of his criminal record.
In
a halting, often incoherent interview from the jailhouse on Monday with
KGO-TV in San Francisco, Mr. Lopez-Sanchez said that he had found a gun
wrapped in a T-shirt
under a bench on the pier, and that when he picked it up, it had fired
three shots.
Speaking
in Spanish, he said he did not remember the events well because he had
taken sleeping pills. But he said, “When I go to the court, I am going
to plead guilty,”
and added, “I want to have the punishment I deserve as quickly as
possible.”
Ms.
Steinle was “the most amazing, loving, outgoing person,” her brother
Brad Steinle told Anderson Cooper on CNN. He cautioned against rancor
over the killing. It would
be “easy for us to hate and be angry, but Kate wouldn’t want that,” he
said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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