There are a number of national stories recently that seem to resonate with voters. A big one is the killing of a San Francisco woman by an illegal alien with seven felony arrests who was deported five times.
The fatal shooting of a woman in San Francisco last week, allegedly by an illegal immigrant man convicted of seven felonies and previously deported to Mexico, has sparked a debate about the extent to which local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities should cooperate.
At issue is the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of seeking to identify potentially deportable individuals in jails or prisons nationwide by issuing a “detainer,” a request rather than an order to extend the individual’s detention.
San Francisco is a “Sanctuary City” which has pledged to resist efforts by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to deport illegal aliens.
On March 26, Mr. Sanchez was booked into the San Francisco County Jail on a local drug-related warrant after serving a federal prison term, the city’s sheriff’s office said. The next day, Mr. Sanchez appeared in San Francisco Superior Court and the drug charges were dismissed.
After San Francisco officials confirmed that Mr. Sanchez’s federal prison term had been completed and that he had no active warrants, he was released from jail on April 15. He was freed despite a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of DHS, to the city’s sheriff’s department that would have enabled the federal agency to take him into custody.
This is routine, plus of course, the fact that the Obama Administration has chosen to facilitate illegal immigration and resist deportation.