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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Tuesday, July 07, 2015

San Francisco shooting case shows disconnect on immigration

USA Today
By Trevor Hughes
July 6, 2015

The shooting death of a woman on a San Francisco pier, allegedly by a convicted felon illegally in the United States, illustrates a disconnect between federal immigration officials who wanted him deported and local officials who ultimately let him go.

Francisco Sanchez, 45, a Mexican citizen deported from the United States five times and only recently released from U.S. prison after again getting caught sneaking into the United States, admitted Sunday he accidentally shot Kathryn "Kate" Steinle, 32, on July 1 as she walked on San Francisco's Pier 14 with her father and a friend.

The San Francisco District Attorney on Monday charged Sanchez with murder, and he's set to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon.

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.

"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," said Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said Monday.

The requests, known as "detainers," ask local law enforcement to notify ICE agents before they release a convicted criminal with a history of immigration violations.

"We're not asking local law enforcement to do our job...all we're asking is that they notify us when a serious foreign national criminal offender is being released to the street so we can arrange to take custody," Christensen said.

Steinle's death renewed frustration over how to handle illegal immigration in America and sharpened the focus on San Francisco, which is considered a "sanctuary city." Municipal workers there are barred from assisting federal immigration officials unless specifically ordered to do so by a court, or federal or state law.

In a jailhouse interview with KGO-TV, Sanchez on Sunday told a reporter he knew San Francisco offered sanctuary to people unlawfully in the country and had come there to look for a restaurant, construction or landscaping job. He said he accidentally shot Steinle after a gun he found wrapped in a shirt on a bench went off: "I hear the boom, boom three times," he said.

San Francisco police on Monday declined to release additional information about the incident, including the kind of handgun recovered from the harbor. Sanchez told the TV station he threw the gun into the water.

Immigration "detainers" have become an increasingly touchy subject. Many county sheriffs refuse to honor ICE requests to hold suspects for up to 48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be freed because of a series of court decisions that made it clear such detainers are simply requests. Sheriffs fear -- and courts have ruled-- that holding people after they've finished their sentence or would otherwise be eligible for bail violates the Constitution.


Last year more than 10,182 people flagged on ICE detainers were instead released back into the community, which the agency says made it harder for agents to effectively enforce immigration law. President Obama has ordered ICE officials to focus on deporting "felons not families," and last year more than 85% of deportees removed from the interior of the United States had a prior felony conviction, compared to 38% in 2008.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

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