AP
By Elliot Spagat and Janni Har
July 8 , 2015
Long
before he was arrested in the shooting death of a woman at one of San
Francisco's most popular tourist sites, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez was
using the U.S.-Mexican
border like a revolving door.
He
was arrested while in the U.S. illegally and deported to his native
Mexico five times from June 1994 to June 2009, only to slip back into
the country within days, weeks
or months. He served roughly 15 years in federal prison in three stints
for illegal re-entry, completing his most recent stretch earlier this
year.
But
his habit of sneaking across the border over and over again is not all
that uncommon. And probably no one outside law enforcement would have
even paid much attention
to Sanchez if not for what happened after he finished his latest stint
behind bars.
Last
week, he was arrested and accused of killing 32-year-old Kathryn
Steinle as she strolled on a popular San Francisco pier with her father.
It turned out that Sanchez,
45, was out on the streets because of San Francisco's "sanctuary"
policy of minimal cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The
slaying has brought heavy criticism down on the city from politicians
of both parties and become the latest flashpoint in the debate over how
to deal with illegal
immigration. On Wednesday, the San Francisco Sheriff's Department said
it requested that Lopez be brought to them to face a 20-year-old
marijuana possession charge and paid for his transportation before
releasing him.
It
illustrated yet again the way border enforcement along the nearly
2,000-mile boundary with Mexico is a gargantuan and often frustrating
task.
"It's
hard to physically prevent a committed immigrant from finding a way to
get back in the U.S.," said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director for U.S.
immigration policy at
the Migration Policy Institute. "There is no death penalty for
immigration."
In
2013, a total of 18,498 people were sentenced for the federal crime of
felony re-entry of the U.S. The offenders had been deported an average
of 3.2 times each. The
average sentence was 18 months, according to the U.S. Sentencing
Commission.
Sanchez
was deported the first time less than four months before President Bill
Clinton launched Operation Gatekeeper to beef up border enforcement in
San Diego, where
the Border Patrol was badly overmatched by immigrants who typically
stormed out of the hills by the dozens or the hundreds.
A
dramatic increase in border enforcement from California to Texas after
9/11 made it increasingly difficult to cross. The Border Patrol doubled
to more than 20,000 agents
under President George W. Bush, and fences were erected on about
one-third of the border.
Still, the most determined and physically fit are able to cross.
He
was sent to federal prison in 1998, serving about five years, and again
in 2003, where he put in nearly six years, and again in 2011, when he
served close to four years
for being picked up by authorities trying to enter the country at a
border crossing in Eagle Rock, Texas. He had given border inspectors a
ruse that he was born in Arizona and therefore a U.S. citizen.
After
he completed that term in March, federal officials transferred custody
to the San Francisco Sheriff's Department to face the marijuana charge.
Freya Horne, a sheriff's
department lawyer, said agency policy is to request transfers of all
prison inmates being released who have outstanding felony warrants.
But
local prosecutors dropped the drug charge, and the San Francisco
sheriff, citing the city's sanctuary policy and a 2013 city ordinance,
released Sanchez in April,
despite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement request to hold him for
deportation.
ICE
officials criticized the sheriff, who in turned blamed the federal
agency for not obtaining a warrant or court order that would have kept
Sanchez locked up.
After
his arrest in the waterfront shooting, Sanchez told TV news stations he
found the gun on the pier under a T-shirt and it accidentally went off.
On
Wednesday, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said the gun used in the
killing belonged to one of its rangers. Spokeswoman Dan Wilson said the
service weapon had been
stolen from the ranger's car in a break-in while he was on business in
San Francisco. The BLM employs some 200 armed rangers, who patrol public
lands and enforce laws related to mining, grazing, timber and other
activities.
Sanchez pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder charges.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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