Los Angeles Times
By Lee Romney
July 14, 2015
Each
speaker reiterated an undisputed fact: The fatal shooting of
32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco's Embarcadero is a tragedy.
One
by one, immigrants and immigrant rights advocates stepped to the
lectern on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday and offered condolences.
They spoke of also losing loved
ones, and they vowed to "hold up" the Steinle family in their time of
pain and grief.
They held white carnations in Steinle's name, offering private prayers as they gathered them in a vase.
Beneath
the tone of respect was a plea: that officials in this longtime
sanctuary city and across the country dial down the rhetoric on
immigration enforcement and engage
in "sober" dialogue that "protects all communities."
"I
am undocumented," Sandy Valenciano told the gathered crowd. "My
earliest memories are of the fear my parents carried whenever they saw a
cop car approach."
The
core principle of sanctuary, she and others said, is helping immigrants
who are here without documents feel safe enough to cooperate with the
police, report crimes
and step forward as witnesses.
Valenciano
immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico with her family in 1993, when she
was 4 years old. She now works with the California Immigrant Youth
Justice Alliance.
"We
are keeping the family in our thoughts and prayers," she said, "and we
ask that we all ... come together in solidarity to find a solution."
She
and others reiterated support for the Due Process for All ordinance,
passed unanimously by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and signed
into law by Mayor Ed Lee
in late 2013.
The
ordinance restricted cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement detainers -- requests that inmates be held for pickup and
possible deportation -- except
when an inmate has been held to answer for a violent felony and
committed another within the past seven years.
Juan
Francisco Lopez-Sanchez -- the five-time deportee who has pleaded not
guilty to a murder charge in the Steinle shooting -- did not fall into
that category.
The
Sheriff's Department released him from custody in April without
honoring a request from ICE that they detain him for pickup. Steinle was
shot July 1, allegedly by
Lopez-Sanchez, who admitted to accidentally discharging a weapon he
said he had found on the ground.
But his name was not mentioned here on Tuesday.
Walda
Correa, a Honduran immigrant who was held for deportation in Texas
after reporting to police that she had been the victim of domestic
violence, said there "aren't
words to describe" the pain the Steinle family must be feeling.
But
in San Francisco, Correa said she found a sense of trust in the police
-- along with legal assistance -- that she fears could be lost.
"We
cannot because of the actions of one person change the law in a way
that affects thousands," she implored. "We have to remember why we
passed laws like the one we
did in San Francisco."
------------
FOR THE RECORD
An
earlier version of this post incorrectly translated a quote from
Correa as saying: "We cannot because of what happened to one person
change the law in a way that affects
thousands."
------------
A
political firestorm erupted after the killing of Steinle, who had taken
a job here selling medical devices and was strolling with her father
before a planned dinner
when she was shot.
Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump weighed in first, calling Steinle's
death "totally preventable" and saying it proved the need for a wall at
the Mexican
border. Democratic hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton soon joined critics,
saying on CNN that San Francisco "made a mistake" and should have
accommodated Lopez-Sanchez's deportation.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein -- a former San Francisco mayor -- also lambasted the city's policy in a letter to the mayor.
“I
strongly believe that an undocumented individual, convicted of multiple
felonies and with a detainer request from ICE, should not have been
released,” she wrote to
Lee.
San
Francisco's declaration as a sanctuary city dates back to 1989. Many
other cities have made similar declarations -- Los Angeles and San Diego
among them -- stating
to one degree or another that local law enforcement should remain
separate from federal civil immigration enforcement in order to reduce
fear and encourage cooperation.
The
Due Process for All ordinance built on that stance, coming in response
to Secure Communities, a federal immigration enforcement program rolled
out in 2008. While the
program promised to prioritize the deportation of convicted felons, it
ensnared many minor offenders as well as those never charged with any
crimes.
Correa said she was among them.
As
controversy over the program grew, many jurisdictions nationwide
limited their cooperation with ICE, and California in 2014 enacted a law
to prevent local jurisdictions
from honoring ICE "detainers" for minor offenders. The Trust Act,
however, would have allowed local jurisdictions to detain Lopez-Sanchez
for ICE because of a handful of old drug-related felonies.
After
two federal courts in 2014 deemed the practice of holding inmates
beyond their release dates for ICE pickup unconstitutional, however,
just about all jurisdictions
statewide and many across the country stopped complying altogether.
San Francisco was among them.
Steinle's
parents have now weighed in on the immigration debate. The Pleasanton
couple appeared with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on Monday to promote
"Kate's Law," which would
require five-year prison sentences for all those caught illegally
entering the United States.
(Lopez-Sanchez
had served three long federal prison sentences for criminal reentry and
his most recent conviction kept him in custody for more than five
years.)
As criticisms fly, many in San Francisco are standing by their principles.
Bill
Ong Hing, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law
who specializes in immigration policy, told the crowd that he has two
daughters and was deeply
affected by Steinle's shooting.
But,
he said, "San Francisco is a safer place now because of the Due Process
for All ordinance. It's safer because the immigrant community trusts
the police department."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment