FILE -- July 2, 2015: Liz Sullivan, left, and Jim Steinle, right, parents of Kathryn "Kate" Steinle, talk to members of the media outside their home in Pleasanton, Calif. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
)Looking for justice? Move to Mexico. When it comes to looking to the U.S. courts for protection, you may have a better chance if you’re from south of the border.
Kathryn "Kate" Steinle was shot dead on July 1, allegedly by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican felon who was in the U.S. illegally. Lopez-Sanchez would have been deported but for the fact that San Francisco is a "sanctuary city," which is why officials there chose to release him and ignore an ICE detainer. This effectively put him back on the street. And yet, if Steinle's family tries to sue the city for this travesty, it may be thrown out of court.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, a judge has just denied a motion to dismiss a case brought by the mother of a Mexican teen who was shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting. You read that right. The teen was Mexican, shot in Mexico, and the judge still ruled that his mother may sue the Border Patrol agent. U.S. District Court Judge Raner Collins opined that "the Mexican national may avail himself to the protections of the Fourth Amendment and that the agent may not assert qualified immunity." The ACLU attorney on the case applauded this ruling, saying, "The court was right to recognize that constitutional protections don't stop at the border."
Perhaps they begin there. If Kate Steinle's family cannot use our laws to get justice in her name, and yet the family of this Mexican teen can, the immigration debate has truly become the twilight zone.
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