What Washington Has Wrought on Illegal Immigration

About five hours south of San Francisco, where Kate Steinle was murdered in broad daylight by an illegal immigrant, another illegal immigrant has been charged with raping and savagely beating an Air Force veteran to death with a hammer.  According to police, Marilyn Pharis, 64, was sleeping in her Santa Maria, California home in the late morning — after having worked the night shift as a satellite tracker at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base — when an illegal immigrant named Victor Aureliano Martinez and his accomplice Jose Fernando Villagomez broke into her house, raped her, strangled her, and bludgeoned her “mercilessly” with a hammer.  She died eight days later. 

The commander of the Air Force’s 50th Space Wing, where Pharis worked, called her death a “tragic loss.”

Martinez — originally from Durango, Mexico — had been arrested six times in the past 15 months.  But he was roaming free, thanks in part to the Obama administration’s lax view of deportation, its refusal to enforce federal drug laws, and its determination to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent crimes.  California’s parallel efforts contributed as well.

Santa Maria police chief Ralph Martin says, “I believe there’s a blood trail from Washington, D.C. to Sacramento into the bedroom of Marilyn.” 

Santa Maria, population 102,000, is exactly the sort of place where the I-95 open-borders crowd ought to spend some time before they continue to conspire, Gang of Eight-like, to make our immigration problems even worse.  Perhaps they would then finally start to appreciate the ill-effects of illegal immigration (much of which starts out as legal) and the lack of assimilation that inevitably results when immigration is both lawless and excessive. 

Steve LeBard is a business owner in Santa Maria who lives in the town of Orcutt, which borders Santa Maria to the south.  With some help from THE WEEKLY STANDARD, he fought and won a battle against the California Department of Transportation to hang an American flag near the entrance to charming Old Town Orcutt, but he has yet to prevail in his effort to build a privately funded memorial to veterans on that same site.  LeBard emailed a few thoughts in the wake of this brutal murder of an innocent Air Force veteran:

“Most people that live in the Santa Maria area believe that Santa Maria is an unofficial ‘sanctuary city.’  I disagree.  I believe Santa Maria is a Mexican city — of sorts.  A large part of the city speaks Spanish and has no interest in learning English — with many businesses advertising in Spanish only.  These people speak of returning to Mexico someday — bringing their new-found prosperity with them — they don’t want to be Americans….

“What does this have to do with this vicious murder?  It’s simple — if you’re here illegally you don't rock the panga — you don’t cooperate with the police and you don’t report crime.  You create a haven for criminals — gangs that prey on the mostly good people that are here working the farms….

“Santa Maria is the perfect storm when it comes to illegal immigration.  It is a community that has it resources overwhelmed by people coming here with knowledge of how to work the system.  They have it down pat, from taxes to social services to free buses to the fields.  They use the local hospital emergency room as their primary-care physician.  (I'm a Vietnam veteran; if I go to the VA Clinic and there is something wrong with me, they put me on a four-hour bus to Los Angeles.  If I'm a Mexican (as in Mexican citizen), I go to the emergency room and the hospital negates the bill — passes it on to me...a U.S. taxpayer.)

Via: Weekly Standard

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Worlds Apart on Kathryn Steinle: When Political Opportunism Reigns Supreme

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — The small Swedish Jewish Museum is tucked away on a side street. Discreet signage instructs would-be visitors to push a button which activates a camera, so they can be screened before they are granted entry. The museum’s permanent exhibition fills one fairly small room. Most of the objects on display are Jewish ritual items with some connection to Sweden, amid descriptions of the relatively short history of the Jews in Sweden (Jews have a longer history of permanent residence in the U.S. than in Sweden). There is also a small section devoted to World War II, where one item stands out from all the rest.

Compact, commonplace and simple, one everyday item is the museum’s most extraordinary exhibit. Raoul Wallenberg’s small, well-worn, personal telephone book in his own handwriting is displayed, with the page open to Adolf Eichmann’s phone number. Yes, Adolf Eichmann. It’s just one page. And as much as that one page sends one’s train of thought in all sorts of directions, who knows how many other secrets are hidden within the phone book’s pages? Each number has its own story to tell. It’s simply incredible how such a small item can manage to open itself and the viewer to such a wide, horrible swath of the world’s recent history.

At the top of the display case with Wallenberg’s phone book, there is a quote from the Talmud: “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” This quotation gained some currency with the movie Schindler’s List, which used it as a kind of tag line. Poetic and true in a multitude of ways, the quotation is also a fitting tribute to Raoul Wallenberg.

When I got home that evening, I read about California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is preparing for her coronation as Senator Barbara Boxer’s successor, and a comment she made about the recent murder of Kathryn Steinle. Kathryn Steinle was allegedly murdered earlier this month by Jose Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who was in the U.S. illegally, having been convicted of multiple felonies and having already been deported five times. He had been in the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, who had ignored an ICE request to turn him over to their agents for deportation.

Harris said: “Let’s not react to one specific case, when we are looking at a national problem. Let’s react to that specific case in prosecuting that specific murder, and making sure he faces very swift consequences and accountability. On the issue of immigration policy, let’s be smarter.”

Not exactly Talmudic wisdom. Not exactly: “Whoever saves a life, it is as if she has saved the entire world.”

Wouldn’t the converse also be true? Indeed, the first part of the passage from the Talmud suggests, “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world.”

For Kathryn Steinle’s family, an entire world was destroyed. One minute she was strolling through San Francisco with her father, the next minute she was dead. Her last words were a plea to her father for help, much like Kelly Thomas, the unarmed, mentally ill homeless man, who, as he was being beaten to death by six Fullerton police officers some four years ago, cried out in vain to his father to save him. Neither Kathryn Steinle nor Kelly Thomas’s fathers could do anything to save their children, and worlds were brutally, murderously and unnecessarily destroyed.

Kamala Harris: “Our policy should not be informed by our collective outrage about one man’s conduct.”

Can we really, seriously suggest that individual cases can’t and shouldn’t influence our thinking on larger policy considerations, whether it be police brutality or immigration? Can’t individual cases, individual actions, individual situations be the catalyst for positive changes? Shouldn’t this be our goal as policymakers, or will the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Kelly Thomas and Kathryn Steinle remain senseless?

Individuals can and do make a difference, whether it be a courageous individual like Raoul Wallenberg, Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson. But can’t we also learn from the victims?  Isn’t it our sacred duty to give some kind of meaning to their lives in the face of senseless actions?

And yet Kamala Harris is effectively saying that while Kathryn Steinle’s murderer should be punished, we shouldn’t draw policy conclusions from the circumstances of her murder.

People who are suggesting that Kathryn Steinle’s murder shouldn’t be “politicized” need to look themselves in the mirror and consider how failing to draw the right conclusions from the circumstances of her murder is in itself the worst kind of opportunistic, cynical political hay-making. I doubt Harris suggested after Newtown, Aurora, Columbine, Charleston or Chattanooga that we shouldn’t inform our policies by our collective sadness and outrage at those tragedies. Neither should we fail to take into account the context of Kathryn Steinle’s murder, as well as how it could have been reasonably avoided, in setting policy, even if it means standing up to special interest groups who feel that the context and conclusions may harm their own, narrow agendas.

It’s fairly simple. Jose Francisco Lopez-Sanchez should never have been in the U.S.  He had been convicted multiple times of felonies. He had already been deported five times. He himself says that he chose to return to San Francisco because he felt San Francisco’s current sanctuary city policies protected him from deportation. He was right.

And yet, had he not been in the country, Kathryn Steinle would be alive today. Why is it so hard for Ms. Harris, as well as other politicians, to acknowledge this simple, clear, logical truth?

And this from the highest law-enforcement official in the state.

Instead of pandering and trying to connect the murder to a lack of “comprehensive immigration reform,” it would be fitting if Ms. Harris would accept the simple truth that Lopez-Sanchez should not have been in the U.S. — and then try to figure out solutions to avoid any more senseless murders. Accept responsibility. Acknowledge the fact that had Lopez-Sanchez not been released by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, Steinle’s murder wouldn’t have happened, couldn’t have happened. Do your job. Work on ways to make sure that felons who are in this country illegally are deported and that “sanctuary city” policies aren’t allowed to protect felons like Lopez-Sanchez. Do the right thing.

In the meantime, all we seem to get is double-talk, sidestepping and excuses.

It’s not only both sad and insulting to us as voters, but until and unless our political leaders are willing to step up and take action to fix the problem, we can only expect more of the same. And it’s just a matter of time until another world, senselessly, is destroyed.

John Mirisch currently serves on the City Council of Beverly Hills. As mayor, he created the Sunshine Task Force to work toward a more open, transparent and participatory local government.

Via: California Political Review

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Illegal Alien Crime Wave in Texas: 611,234 Crimes, 2,993 Murders

The murder of Kathryn Steinle on the Embarcadero in San Francisco by an illegal alien is the most familiar example of a crime committed by an alien.  But an unreleased internal report by the Texas Department of Public Safety reveals that aliens have been involved in thousands of crimes in Texas alone, including nearly 3,000 homicides.

PJ Media obtained an never-before-released copy of a Texas DPS report on human smuggling containing the numbers of crimes committed by aliens in Texas.   According to the analysis conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, foreign aliens committed 611,234 unique crimes in Texas from 2008 to 2014, including thousands of homicides and sexual assaults.

The murder of Kathryn Steinle on the Embarcadero in San Francisco by an illegal alien is the most familiar example of a crime committed by an alien.  But an unreleased internal report by the Texas Department of Public Safety reveals that aliens have been involved in thousands of crimes in Texas alone, including nearly 3,000 homicides.

PJ Media obtained an never-before-released copy of a Texas DPS report on human smuggling containing the numbers of crimes committed by aliens in Texas.   According to the analysis conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, foreign aliens committed 611,234 unique crimes in Texas from 2008 to 2014, including thousands of homicides and sexual assaults.

That means that the already stratospheric aggregate crime totals would be even higher if crimes by many illegal aliens who are not in the fingerprint database were included.

Confessed Texas killer Juan Vasquez

The Secure Communities initiative is an information-sharing program between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Presumably, both departments would have data on the number of fingerprint searches conducted that revealed a criminal act involved an alien.

Texas has been ground zero in illegal alien crossings into the United States.  The Texas DPS report shows that in the Rio Grande Valley, 154,453 illegal aliens were apprehended in 2013.

Via: PJ Media

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[VIDEO] Sanctuary Cities Beyond Federal Control, Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson Says

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted Tuesday that the administration goofed in releasing an illegal immigrant to sanctuary city San Francisco ahead of a shocking murder earlier this month, but said there’s little the government can do to pressure sanctuary communities to change their minds.

Facing lawmakers for the first time since the slaying of Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old killed while out walking with her father, Mr. Johnson said he’s made personal appeals to San Francisco to rethink its refusal to let police cooperate with federal immigration agents, and will try again in the wake of the killing.

But he declined to criticize sanctuary cities themselves, and told Congress not to try to pass laws forcing cooperation, saying it could conflict with the Constitution, and it won’t win over the hearts of reluctant communities.

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SEE ALSO: Jeh Johnson: No contact with family of S.F. victim, not sure about Obama

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“My hope is that jurisdictions like San Francisco — San Francisco County — will cooperate with our new program,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. “I’m making the rounds with a lot of jurisdictions. My deputy secretary and I and other leaders in DHS have been very, very active for the purpose of promoting public safety to get jurisdictions to cooperate with us on this.”

He said several dozen jurisdictions who had previously refused to cooperate have already signed up or signaled interest in working with the new Priority Enforcement Program.

Republicans doubted that asking nicely would work with the five cities and counties that have turned Mr. Johnson down already, and they wondered why he and President Obama didn’t want to get tougher on the recalcitrant ones.

“How in the hell can a city tell you ‘No’?” demanded Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican. “And when a young woman is shot walking with her father, with somebody with this resume, either you got to do something, we got to do something, or maybe we can do it together.”

Steinle’s death has refocused the immigration debate, which, for the last few years, had been won by immigrant rights advocates arguing for more lenient treatment for illegal immigrants, symbolized by the most sympathetic category of the Dreamers, young adult illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Now, Steinle’s slaying — and the suspect, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, deported five times before and out on the streets after San Francisco refused to hold him for pickup by immigration agents — has put attention on victims of illegal immigration.

Via: Washington Times

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Can Kate Steinle's Family Sue San Francisco Over Its Sanctuary City Policy?

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.

Via: Fox News

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Candidates call for changes in "sanctuary city" policies

As immigration continues to be a contentious issue on the campaign trail, many politicians are calling for changes in "sanctuary city" policies, reports CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford.

The idea of the policies is to support immigrants and provide assistance if they became involved with minor offenses. But the policies have come under scrutinysince the murder of a San Francisco woman, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant.

"We ought to eliminate 'sanctuary cities,"' former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said.

Play VIDEO

San Francisco under fire for "sanctuary" immigration policy

On this immigration issue, Republican presidential candidates agree.

"One of the things we've talked about in the past, and we've tried to get included with negotiations with Democrats in the past, is the idea of getting rid of the 'sanctuary city' situation," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said on Fox News.

Now Congress is considering action.

"I don't think you can have whole cities or whole states just not obeying the law," Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said.

It became front-page news after the murder of Kathryn Steinle, allegedly shot and killed by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a convicted felon who had been deported to Mexico five times.

Lopez-Sanchez was released from jail in April. But he was on the streets because San Francisco officials, under city policy, ignored a request from federal immigration officials to notify them before he was set free.

Play VIDEO

Killing ignites immigration debate over "sanctuary cities"

The crime even has Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton softening their previous support for "sanctuary cities."

"The city made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported," she said.

But for Republicans, it's a chance to reset the crucial immigration debate and move away fromDonald Trump's incendiary comments about illegal immigrants.

San Francisco is one of more than 200 sanctuary jurisdictions, including New York, Miami and Los Angeles, that can offer a safe harbor for undocumented immigrants who otherwise might face deportation.

Via: CBS This Morning

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PELOSI USES MURDER BY ILLEGAL TO TOUT GUN CONTROL

Democrats held a press conference yesterday pushing for more gun control after the Charleston shooting and Pelosi made sure to mention the murder of Kate Steinle, calling it another example of ‘gun violence’, suggesting it’s why we need more gun control:

The gun used in Kate’s murder was stolen from a federal agent which means the gun was obtained criminally and there’s not a single law in this nation that would have prevented that.

As a side note, the murderer in Charleston also obtained his gun legally as well. LEGALLY.

More to the point though, it was an illegal who committed the murder and if he hadn’t been here Kate would still be alive!

We don’t need more gun control, we need more ‘illegal’ control!

But Pelosi has an agenda to push so to hell with the facts.

Via: The Right Scoop

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[VIDEO] Fox’s Jesse Watters Confronted San Fran Board of Supervisors over Kate Steinle’s Death

Bill O’Reilly‘s roving reporter Jesse Watters dropped his usual shtick to get serious and confront San Francisco’s board of supervisors over Kate Steinle‘s death.

Since Monday, O’Reilly has made it clear he’s very outraged about Steinle being shot dead by an illegal immigrant who had already been deported. He said the Obama administration is “complicit”and her death is “collateral damage” of San Francisco’s “insane left-wing politics.”

Tonight he kept the focus on San Francisco, showing video of Watters there yesterday confronting the city board of supervisors over their “dangerous sanctuary city policies.”

He held up a picture of Steinle, said the city let her killer out, and called them out for their silence and for not looking at the photo.

Later on in the segment, Watters attempted to confront other city officials in their offices about her death, but did not exactly get direct responses.

Via: Mediaite

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S.F. Shooting Reveals Gaps in Immigration Enforcement

A slaying in San Francisco has sparked a national furor over its status as a so-called “sanctuary city” for unlawfully present immigrants. In an area popular with tourists, a five-time deportee named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez shot Kathryn Steinle as she walked the waterfront with her father.

In addition to his five deportations, Lopez-Sanchez had racked up seven felony convictions since 1991, according to the Washington Post. “San Francisco authorities released him from custody in April after drug charges against him were dropped, despite an urgent request from the Department of Homeland Security that he be deported a sixth time to his native Mexico,” the Post reported.

Laying blame squarely at the feet of the city, federal officials have helped return California to the center of the immigration debate roiling the U.S. amidst the early stages of a presidential election season.

Municipal crisis

Caught flat-footed, city officials have scrambled to respond to the ballooning criticism. Donald Trump, who has made immigration enforcement a divisive wedge issue defining his maverick run for the presidency, recently seized upon the shooting as evidence justifying his proposed crackdown. City officials emphasized that their actions were in accordance with municipal law, as the Los Angeles Times noted:

“San Francisco’s ordinance made Sanchez ineligible for a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold because he did not have ‘a violent felony conviction within the last seven years, or a probable cause for holding issued by a magistrate or judge on a current violent felony,’ said Freya Horne, an attorney for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. ‘Nothing in his background showed anything like that.’”

Lopez-Sanchez fell under the purview of a 2013 law adopted by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. “Since then,” added the Times, “dozens of cities and counties across the country have stopped complying with immigration “detainer” requests after a federal judge ruled that an Oregon county violated one woman’s 4th Amendment rights by holding her for immigration authorities without probable cause.”

Lopez-Sanchez has now been charged by city prosecutors in connection with Steinle’s killing, according to Fox News.

Via: California Political Review

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Gun Used by Illegal Immigrant in San Francisco Shooting Belonged to Federal Agent

AP

The gun used by a Mexican illegal immigrant when he allegedly shot dead a 32-year-old woman at a San Francisco pier belonged to a federal agent, a source confirmed to Fox News Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear how Francisco Sanchez, 45, would have obtained the weapon. However, the San Francisco Chronicle reported sources told the paper the gun had been stolen during a car burglary in June.

Earlier Tuesday, Sanchez pled not guilty to first-degree murder in last week's shooting of Kathryn Steinle, 32, while she was walking with her father and a family friend at Pier 14. Police said witnesses heard no argument or dispute before the shooting, suggesting it was a random attack.

Sanchez had previously told KGO-TV Sunday in a mix of Spanish and English that he found a gun wrapped inside a shirt while he was sitting on a bench at the pier and smoking a cigarette.

"So I picked it up and ... it started to fire on its own," Sanchez said, adding that he heard three shots go off.

A source familiar with the investigation told the San Francisco Chronicle that Sanchez said he was at the popular pier to shoot at sea lions, and discarded the firearm after realizing he had shot Steinle.

Via: Fox News

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