ICE

WASHINGTON (January 12, 2017) – The Center for Immigration Studies new report analyzes the FY 2016 enforcement statistics from the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS), released by Department of Homeland Security on the last work day of the calendar year, on the eve of a holiday weekend. The deportation numbers credited to ICE are the lowest since 2006.

Aliens removed from the interior in 2016 have declined 73 percent from 2009, the year President Obama took office; and, unfortunately for community safety, there has been a 60 percent decline from the peak in interior criminal alien removals in 2010.

Unlike in past years, the annual enforcement reports contain only a fraction of the important statistics that traditionally have been published on the work of the immigration agencies. Past numbers allowed observation of historical trends and comparisons that are more difficult to make now.

View the full report at: http://cis.org/ICE-deportations-hit-10-yr-low.

Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy studies and author or the report, lamented, “DHS discloses few actual statistics now, and even fewer trends. Instead they claim success because most of those removed were 'priorities,' not because the agencies made any headway on the illegal immigration problem. The new reports are of interest only to those who believe that enforcement should be constrained as much as possible. They are of no use to the rest of us who want to know what the DHS agencies actually did all year with taxpayer funds.”

Key Findings

• Deportations credited to ICE in 2016 increased by two percent. All of the increase was in cases of aliens arrested by the Border Patrol, not interior enforcement.
• Interior deportations fell from 69,478 in 2015 to 65,322 in 2016, out of a population of illegal aliens now estimated at 12 million.
• Deportations of criminal aliens fell from 63,127 in 2015 to 60,318 in 2016, out of an estimated population of 2 million criminal aliens.
• The number of deportations under the Obama administration is not easily comparable to prior administrations because of the number of border cases included, but it certainly is not record-breaking, as Obama has claimed. The most deportations occurred under the Clinton administration.
• DHS maintains that CBP arrests have always been a large share of ICE deportations, but in fact this is a new development under the Obama administration. In prior administrations only one-third of deportations credited to ICE were border cases; now about two-thirds are border cases.

The constitutional challenge to President Obama’s executive action on immigration keeps getting more remarkable. A federal judge has now exposed how the Justice Department systematically deceived lower courts about the Administration’s conduct, and he has imposed unprecedented legal measures to attempt to sterilize this ethics rot.

On Thursday District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas found that Obama Administration lawyers committed misconduct that he called “intentional, serious and material.” In 2015 he issued an injunction—now in front of the Supreme Court—blocking Mr. Obama’s 2014 order that rewrote immigration law to award legal status and federal and state benefits to nearly five million aliens.

When 26 states sued to block the order in December 2014, Justice repeatedly assured Judge Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security would not start processing applications until February 2015 at the earliest. Two weeks after the injunction came down, in March, Justice was forced to admit that DHS had already granted or renewed more than 100,000 permits.

Justice has also conceded in legal filings that all its lawyers knew all along that the DHS program was underway, despite what they said in briefs and hearings. One DOJ lawyer told Judge Hanen that “I really would not expect anything between now and the date of the hearing.” As the judge notes, “How the government can categorize the granting of over 100,000 applications as not being ‘anything’ is beyond comprehension.”

Justice’s only explanation is that its lawyers either “lost focus on the fact” or “the fact receded in memory or awareness”—the fact here being realities that the DOJ was required to disclose to the court. The states weren’t able to make certain arguments or seek certain legal remedies because the program supposedly hadn’t been implemented, leaving them in a weaker legal position.

More to the point, an attorney’s first and most basic judicial obligation is to tell the truth. Judge Hanen concludes that the misrepresentations “were made in bad faith” and “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” Many a lawyer has been disbarred for less.

Yet the misconduct he has unmasked should trouble Americans of all political persuasions. Prosecutors often abuse their powers in run-of-the-mill cases. But this is a constitutional challenge with major consequences for the separation of powers, and the deceit must have required the participation and coordination of dozens of political appointees and career lawyers. That suggests a serious institutional failure, not mere rogue actors.

Main Justice may have figured that the state challenge would be tossed for lack of standing, and thus its dissembling wouldn’t matter. This would mean that President Obama’s refusal to recognize the legal limits of his executive power has spread a culture of lawlessness among his lawyers too.

AG Lynch could salvage the credibility of the Justice Department by explaining how this breakdown happened. Whether you worry about how Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would wield government powers, everyone has an interest in an honest accounting of the facts that were denied to Judge Hanen. Read more about The Miscarriage of Justice Department

On Tuesday, April 19, 2016, the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security conducted a hearing on the topic, “The Real Victims of a Reckless and Lawless Immigration Policy: Families and Survivors Speak Out on the Real Cost of This Administration’s Policies.”

I urge you to watch the entire video of that important hearing...

The witnesses at this hearing were: Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland; Michelle Root, the mother of Sarah Root; Laura Wilkerson,  the mother of Joshua Wilkerson; and Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the United Methodist Church.

The timing of the hearing could not have been better because the day before, on Monday, April 18^th, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the administration's implementation of the DAPA program (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents)...

...President Obama stood in the White House Rose Garden to proclaim that “since Congress failed to act” he was going to take action. Of course to Obama, his concept of a "failure of Congress to act” was the refusal of Congress to pass bad legislation. When Congress votes down bad legislation, they most certainly are acting.

Obama also deceptively said that this was about children, kids and young people, even though illegal aliens as old as 31 years of age could apply for this program...

...Incidentally, I cannot pass up the opportunity to note that while the term “alien” has come under attack by Obama and his supporters, the open borders anarchists, the term “DREAMers” is derived from the acronym for the “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors” Act. 

The “a” in DREAMers stands for “aliens.” ...

The congressional hearing that was conducted on the heels of oral arguments at the Supreme Court illuminated the level of carnage that Obama's executive orders, policy decisions and misuse of prosecutorial discretion has unleashed on America and Americans.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, opened the hearing with his statement that set the stage and the tone for what would follow. Breitbart.com used one of Rep. Gowdy's statements as the title for the article “Trey Gowdy: More Illegal Immigrants Convicted of Crimes At Large in the U.S. Than The Population of Pittsburgh.” Gowdy noted that simply stating that there are more than 350,000 known criminal aliens at large throughout the United States is a statistic and statistics are often not persuasive, so he thought he needed to put that huge number in perspective. And, indeed, he did....

Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas had previously chaired the House Immigration Subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee...

Smith's understandable outrage at the April 19^th hearing became readily apparent when he stated rhetorically that he wondered if President Obama might be an accessory to the crimes committed by illegal aliens since he has implemented policies that he knows are going to result in the loss of life to innocent Americans, noting that the administration had released from custody some 100,000 aliens who had been convicted of committing serious crimes. He also noted that although it has been estimated that illegal aliens account for about 3% of the U.S. population, they account for 30% of all murders -- making illegal aliens 10 times more likely to commit murder than anyone else.

Congressman Smith came up with some additional staggering and infuriating statistics. He noted that of the 100,000 aliens that Obama had released from custody, 473 had been previously convicted of committing homicides, 375 of these criminal aliens had been convicted of kidnapping, 890 of these released criminal aliens had been previously convicted for committing sexual assaults and others of this stellar group of “pre-citizens” (the term I decided to use when, during the Carter administration all INS personnel were told to stop using the term “illegal alien” to describe aliens illegally present in the United States) had been previously convicted of committing 10,731 assaults...

As bad as these statistics are, Smith went on to report that since the release of these criminal aliens, many have gone on to further their criminal careers by committing 124 additional (known) homicides from 2010 until 2014 and an additional 1,423 sexual assaults.

...two of the witnesses who testified at the congressional hearing, as I noted at the beginning of this article, were Michelle Root, the mother of Sarah Root, and Laura Wilkerson, the mother of Joshua Wilkerson.

Ms. Root and Ms. Wilkerson both lost their children to illegal aliens.

The title of a Breitbart.com news article posted on the day of the hearing was based on Michelle Root's poignant and heart-breaking prepared testimony at the hearing: “Mother of Daughter Killed by Illegal: His Bail Was ‘Less Than it Cost to Bury My Baby.’”

The illegal alien in this case was released on bail and it is believed he fled to his native Honduras, availing himself use of the “escape hatch” foreign criminals and terrorists frequently avail themselves of: the ability to flee our nation to escape the long reach of the law.

The day after the hearing CNS News posted a report about the compelling testimony of Laura Wilkerson at that hearing in an article that summed up the anguished mother's demands of our elected “representatives.”

The title of that article was, “Mother of Teen Murdered by Illegal Immigrant Tells Congress: ‘Do Something – It Is Your Job.’”

Wilkerson’s prepared testimony provided horrific details about the torture and murder of her high school student son by Hermilo Vildo Moralez, an illegal alien.

Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland discussed how since the “surge” of “unaccompanied minors” the high schools and even lower grade schools have witnessed a massive increase in gang activity by those aliens who flooded across our southwest border. Sheriff Jenkins noted that the majority of those gang members who have been arrested arrived across that border after 2013...

Rep. Bob Goodlatte is the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and participated in this hearing. His final statement in his prepared testimony will serve as the conclusion for my commentary today:

By releasing known criminal aliens and refusing to secure our border, the Administration has sent a clear message to the American people that their safety and security are far less important than ensuring that these individuals remain here. I want to see these dangerous policies stopped, and I will continue working to stand in the way of President Obama’s pen and phone. The real costs of illegal immigration are something no family should be forced to pay.

Medford police on Wednesday arrested both the suspected shooter in a downtown Medford homicide and the man they believe egged him on.

Shane Anthony "Scarface" Zornes, 25, of Spokane, who is suspected of fatally shooting 27-year-old Isaac Deleon early Sunday morning on Bartlett Street, was arrested by Medford police detectives and other law enforcement in the small town of Rosalia, Wash., near Spokane.

Medford police Lt. Mike Budreau said two Medford detectives, Whitman County sheriff's deputies and Spokane police officers surrounded the home of an associate of Zornes Wednesday.

"He came out with his hands up and complied with officers' orders," Budreau said.

Zornes will be extradicted to Jackson County to face a charge of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, he said.

Medford police also added murder charges against Ruben Escareno Marmolejo, 30, of Spokane, Wash., whom they believe told Zornes to shoot Deleon, a Central Point resident.

Marmolejo was arrested on a Washington warrant listing drug charges about 30 minutes after the shooting in the area of Crater Lake Avenue and Bennett Street in Medford. Marmolejo was questioned about possible involvement in the homicide at the time, but was jailed Sunday on the drug charges, police said, and has been held in the Jackson County Jail since then.

A Jackson County grand jury indicted Zornes and Marmolejo on murder charges late Wednesday afternoon. The indictment charged Zornes with murder and criminal conspiracy to commit murder, and Marmolejo on murder, criminal conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder.

The grand jury heard from six witnesses Wednesday, including Medford police detectives Justin Ivens and William Ford and three civilian witnesses. Testimony took about 50 minutes, according to a release from prosecutors, Chief Deputy District Attorney Jeremy Markiewicz and Deputy District Attorney Zori Cook. The grand jury deliberated for about five minutes before announcing that an indictment had been issued.

Budreau said detectives have yet to interview Zornes, and couldn't say how well Deleon knew Marmolejo and Zornes.

"We don't believe they were strangers," Budreau said.

Budreau said investigators don't believe gang activity was involved.

According to police reports, Deleon was walking near Bartlett and Main streets with friends at 2:15 a.m. Sunday when Zornes, Marmolejo and a third male approached them. After they talked for a short period, Zornes allegedly pulled a handgun out and shot Deleon in the chest and fled east.

The investigation so far has found no criminal culpability for a third person of interest who was with Zornes and Marmolejo. The third person of interest was later interviewed and released.

"Although he fled on foot, that doesn't constitute a criminal charge of murder," Budreau said. "He didn't have any criminal liability."

Police had tracked Zornes to the Motel 6 on Biddle Road in Medford at noon Monday, but just missed him. While they were canvassing the area, a witness claimed that a man matching Zornes' description reportedly tried to sell him two handguns in the parking lot of Witham Truck Stop Restaurant.

Budreau said that with the two suspects in the shooting captured, investigators will be better able to determine the reason behind Deleon's death. He added the cause of the shooting is still under investigation, and likely won't be divulged until Zornes' and Marmolejo's trials.

"As far as all of the stuff leading up to this, that's still under investigation," Budreau said.

NOTE:  MARMOLEJO, RUBEN ESCARENO - ICE HOLD

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons began to free the first of about 6,000 drug offenders in its custody on Friday, including dozens convicted in Oregon. All were convicted of serious drug crimes...

Federal judges in Oregon have ordered 34 prisoners cut loose under an amendment to federal sentencing guidelines, although 21 of them are heading into custody of U.S. immigration officials because they are not American citizens, said Thomas H. Edmonds, Oregon's top federal drug prosecutor.

The foreigners are expected to be held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.

"In total, ICE anticipates taking into custody approximately 1,789 non-citizens on October 30 and November 2," ...  "Seven hundred sixty-three of these individuals have already been issued final orders of removal, while the others are in varying stages of processing and removal proceedings."

...eight of those prisoners are from Oregon and another five are Americans from outside the state. They will be supervised by U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services...

The sentence reductions were approved last year by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which cut about two years off the sentences of many drug offenders.
  Read more about 34 Oregon drug offenders join early release exodus of 6,000 U.S. prisoners

Canadian authorities sent out a fugitive alert last year in the hunt for a man suspected of raping a teenage girl in Alberta – apparently unaware that he was already behind bars in a federal prison in Oregon...

Raed Arook's travels in and out of custody – including three illegal entries into the U.S. – is documented in U.S. court papers...

Canadian authorities now want to get the 39-year-old Arook back into custody on their side of the border, and U.S. officials want to comply under a long-standing extradition treaty between the two North American neighbors.

But Arook is contesting Canada's push to extradite him to Alberta, where the Crown Prosecutors Office wants to put him on trial for the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl in his Edmonton hotel room.

Agents discovered that Arook had first entered the U.S. illegally on April 7, 2007, tripping a Customs and Border Patrol surveillance camera five miles west of the Sweet Grass, Montana...

The U.S. apparently sent Arook back to Canada that June. But a few months later, on Oct. 17, 2007, he was convicted of drug possession in Houston...

U.S. authorities deported Arook to Israel on April 22, 2008.

More than five years later, according to government court papers, a 15-year-old girl in Edmonton, identified as "C.S.," gave authorities an account of her encounter with Arook on Sept. 10, 2013:

The two met outside the Strathcona Hotel, where Arook invited the girl up to his suite to do some methamphetamine. She agreed and entered the hotel lobby with the Israeli....

A desk clerk later told police that hotel workers discovered a fire escape ladder had been pulled down, a common way for hotel guests to sneak people in.

The girl told investigators that she entered the hotel room, where she and Arook and two other males smoked and snorted meth. She recalled waking about 2 p.m. the following day in Arook's bed, both of them naked, and found that she had difficulty walking. She went to Stollery Children's Hospital, where a sexual assault examination showed she had suffered abrasions to her genitalia.

Edmonton police arrested Arook and on Sept. 24, 2013, charged him with sexual assault and sexual interference. Both charges carry maximum sentences of up to 10 years in prison. But a little more than four months later, on Feb. 12, 2014, he posted a $5,000 recognizance bond and was released, according to Canadian authorities.

Arook was supposed to appear for trial last September, but failed to appear at the Court of Queens Bench of Alberta. Canadian authorities issued an arrest warrant the following day. But he was nowhere to be found.

At 12:35 p.m. that very day, a sheriff's deputy in Toole County, Montana, spotted Arook walking south on Interstate 15, about seven miles south of the U.S.-Canada border station at Sweet Grass...

The deputy took Arook to the sheriff's office, where he was questioned by U.S. Border Patrol agents. Arook gave them a phony name...

Arook later gave them his true name, and he was charged in federal court with illegally re-entering the U.S.

Last December, U.S. authorities sentenced Arook to one year and one day behind bars and sent him to the government prison complex in Sheridan, 50 miles from Portland.

Somehow, police and court officials in Canada never got the word.

Early last March, the Edmonton Police Service put out a bulletin that listed Arook as a fugitive....

"Arook's current whereabouts are not known," according to the police bulletin, which urged anyone with information about him to contact police or the Crime Stoppers tip line.

But U.S. authorities knew where he was. Arook was serving the last five months of his prison term in Sheridan. On Aug. 11, he completed his federal time and deputy U.S. Marshals transferred him from the prison to a downtown Portland jail.

Arook is now locked up in the Inverness Jail in Northeast Portland, where he's being held on a provisional arrest warrant out of Canada.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman is scheduled to hold an extradition hearing on Oct. 30.

Gorder filed a provisional arrest warrant in August that seeks to extradite Arook to Canada, rather than deport him to Israel.

Lawyers in the Oregon Federal Public Defender's Office, representing Arook in his fight to avoid extradition, pointed out in a recent court motion that his heritage is Palestinian, religion is Muslim and citizenship is Israeli. Therefore they seek U.S. documents that might indicate Arook would suffer political or religious persecution in Canada.

Raed Arook was booked into multiple police agencies in Canada and the U.S. after his 2013 arrest in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The 39-year-old Palestinian Muslim, who holds Israeli citizenship, is now fighting extradition to Canada, where he faces rape charges. His lawyers suggest he might be persecuted for his political or religious views.
  Read more about Canada's fugitive turns up in Oregon prison, now faces extradition as suspected child rapist

A California toddler fighting for her life Thursday after a brutal beating at the hands of an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record is the latest case to rile California sheriffs and police against a U.S. immigration policy they say is forcing them to release dangerous criminals out on the street.

Francisco Javier Chavez, the live-in boyfriend of the unidentified two-year-old's mother, is out on bail after being charged in the late July attack, which left the San Luis Obispo County girl with two broken arms, a broken femur, a compressed spine, a urinary tract infection and a fever of 107 degrees. Chavez's criminal record includes assault and drug convictions and arrests for violent acts including kidnapping, car jacking and cruelty to a child.

A disgusted San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson told FoxNews.com Chavez should have been locked away or deported long before he had the chance to inflict "horrific injuries" on the little girl, but said conflicting federal policies leave his department handcuffed. Instead, Chavez is now free, awaiting a court date for which he may not even show up.

"The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them. That is why we are united in California and asking that this be fixed and changed, because at end of the day, we are the ones who have to let them out the door.”

- San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson

“The truth is, if we had any legal right to hold him, we would, because of the concern that, not being a U.S. citizen, he will bail out and flee the country and flee prosecution,” said Parkinson, who suspects Chavez may have already fled the county.

The issue, says Parkinson and dozens of other sheriffs and police chiefs across California and Arizona, is that, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement routinely asks departments to hold prisoners like Chavez until they can take custody of them for deportation, the local law enforcement officials believe doing so will expose them to lawsuits. They cite court cases including the March, 2014, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling in Galrza v. Szalczyk that held states and localities are not required to imprison people based on ICE "detainer" requests, and that states and localities may be held liable if they participate in wrongful immigration detentions.

“I am not aware of any County in California that is honoring detainers, simply because we can’t,” Parkinson said. “We have to follow the law or the threat of violating the law ourselves,” Parkinson said, citing a Court decision issued approximately one year ago. “The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them. That is why we (local law enforcement) are united in California and asking that this be fixed and changed, because at end of the day, we are the ones who have to let them out the door.”

The Arizona Sheriffs’ Association agrees, noting every day ICE asks local sheriffs to ‘detain’ an inmate, yet don’t provide “rational, legal authority to do so,” putting sheriffs at enormous risk for legal liability. When the local authorities let an illegal immigrant criminal free on bail, they do so reluctantly - and they blame ICE.

ICE maintains there is no requirement that it obtain a judicial warrant to compel law enforcement agencies to hold suspects and that a detainer is sufficient. A spokesperson for ICE said the agency continues to work “cooperatively” with local law enforcement partners and is implementing a new plan, the Priority Enforcement Program – PEP, to place the focus on criminals and individuals who threaten the public safety and ensure they are not released from prisons or jails before they can be taken into ICE custody.

Martin Mayer, legal counsel to sheriffs and chiefs of police in 70 law enforcement agencies throughout California for the last 25 years, and general counsel to the California State Sheriffs’ Association, told FoxNews.com the U.S. Department of Justice, the California Office of the Attorney General, and ICE all take the position that the detainer is only a request and the law does not give sheriffs authorization to hold illegal immigrant suspects ordered released by a judge. 

If ICE agents are present when suspects are ordered released, and if they have the legal basis to take custody of them, they can, but local law enforcement does not have the authority to hold them in the absence of ICE, the California Sheriffs Association recently said in letter to Congress.

The American Civil Liberties Union's California chapter has been vocal in pressuring city police chiefs to honor the court rulings that said ICE detainers are mere requests, not mandates, and that honoring them would violate suspects' Constitutional rights.

“This (ACLU) letter to the cities states that ‘Your police department should immediately cease complying with immigration detainers, or else risk legal liability for detaining individuals in violation of the Fourth Amendment,’” Mayer said.

The ACLU did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

A string of murders across the country by criminal aliens has spotlighted the conflict between ICE and local law enforcement, and in recent days, caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. After one of the cases, the July 24 murder of Marilyn Pharis, a 64-year-old Air Force veteran, Santa Maria Police Chief Ralph Martin blamed the state and federal governments for a convoluted policy that leaves local law enforcement holding the bag.

“I am not remiss to say that from Washington D.C. to Sacramento, there is a blood trail to Marilyn Pharis’ bedroom,” Martin said.
  Read more about Police chiefs, sheriffs blast ICE over policy they say frees violent illegal immigrants

Tragedy on San Francisco's Pier 14

On Wednesday, July 1^st, 32-year-old Kate Steinle was shot and killed on San Francisco’s Pier 14, “one of the city’s most scenic tourist spots.” The ABC affiliate in San Francisco reported San Francisco police said she “was walking along Pier 14 when a man came up and shot her in the upper torso.”

The ABC affiliate reported “Wednesday was supposed to be fun for Kate and her family. She met her father on Pier 14 that night. He was there to take her to Pleasanton, to learn if her brother and his wife were expecting a boy or girl. But tragedy struck instead.” The San Jose Mercury News reported “A bullet pierced Steinle’s aorta and she collapsed to the ground in front of her father, who desperately tried to save her life.”

April 2014 Oregon court ruling

Janice M. Stewart was appointed as a U.S. Magistrate Judge on October 13, 1993. She was the first woman to be appointed to serve as a federal magistrate judge in Oregon.

Judge Stewart ruled on April 11, 2014 that holding Maria Miranda-Olivares for an immigration hold violated her constitutional rights. Miranda-Olivares had been held for 19 hours after completing a two-day jail sentence in Clackamas County for a domestic violence charge. According to the Oregonian “jail officials detained her until the next day, giving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials time to pick her up.” As part of the ruling, the judge found that cities, counties and states could be held liable for unlawful detention for immigration detentions.

In the wake of the ruling, 30 of Oregon’s 36 counties quickly became “sanctuary counties,” according to the Center for Immigration Studies. One Oregon city, Springfield, became a “sanctuary city.”

A Portland immigration lawyer called Judge Stewart’s ruling a game changer and a Lewis and Clark College law professor said “Oregon may actually be one of the leading areas of the country in basically rejecting the idea that state and local law enforcement officers should pay attention to the detainers.”

The April 2014 ruling was followed by a coordinated campaign by immigrant rights’ groups and the ACLU to push other counties to defy federal immigration hold requests (“ICE detainers”) – which are part of the Secure Communities program. They sent letters to counties throughout the U.S.

On May 29, 2014 the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department announced that they would “no longer honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers unless they are supported by judicial determination of probable cause or with a warrant of arrest” – expanding San Francisco’s “sanctuary” status.

Accused murderer a felon illegal immigrant exploiting “sanctuary” status of San Francisco

The accused murderer of Kate Steinle, Francisco Sanchez, is a convicted felon who has been deported 5 times and was only recently released from prison. Sanchez used a gun that had been stolen from a federal agent’s car while the agent was in San Francisco on business.

USA Today reported “Federal officials say he should have never been walking the streets a free man. Federal officials released Sanchez in March from federal prison where he had served nearly four years for previous immigration violations. They delivered Sanchez to the San Francisco sheriff’s office, where he was wanted on felony marijuana distribution charges. Local officials dropped those charges a few days later and released Sanchez onto the street despite a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain him for deportation.”

U.S. News & World Report reported “The San Francisco sheriff, citing the city’s ‘sanctuary city’ policy, released Sanchez in April after prosecutors dropped the drug charge, despite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement request to hold him for federal authorities so deportation proceedings could begin.”

A federal immigration spokeswoman said “As a result, an individual with a lengthy criminal history, who is now the suspect in a tragic murder case, was released onto the street rather than being turned over to ICE for deportation.”

U.S. News & World Report reported “Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told CNN that San Francisco was wrong to ignore the ICE detainer request and release Sanchez from custody.” They also quote Hillary Clinton saying “The city made a mistake not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported.”

USA Today also reported that the accused murderer told a TV reporter he came to San Francisco to look for a job because he knew they offered sanctuary to people unlawfully in the country. Read more about Oregon judge’s connection to illegal immigrant’s murder of Kate Steinle