California Debates Whether to Become a 'Sanctuary' State

It's a murder that is still driving debate nationally about so-called sanctuary cities.

Thirty-two-year-old Kate Steinle was walking along the San Francisco waterfront on July 1, 2015, when shots rang out and she fell to the ground.

She died at the hospital hours later.

An undocumented man was arrested and charged with her murder. He'd recently been released from San Francisco jail after a court dismissed a 20-year-old marijuana charge against him. The San Francisco Sheriff's Department ignored requests to tell immigration officials about his release, citing San Francisco's sanctuary law.

But why the man, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, was in San Francisco in the first place remains unclear. He had just finished almost four years in a federal prison for crossing the border illegally -- the fifth time he’d been caught sneaking into the U.S. He also had seven past felony convictions. Yet the federal government transferred him to San Francisco for a decades-old misdemeanor and immigration officials never came to get him -- or got a court warrant, which would have forced the sheriff to hand Sanchez over to ICE.

Still, the case stoked anger and became campaign fodder for then-candidate Donald Trump.

And nearly two years later, it's still being invoked on both sides of a debate over whether the state of California should embrace policies similar to San Francisco's, which prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement in most circumstances.

Democratic lawmakers in the state Senate recently approved a bill, on a party-line vote, to expand those protections statewide -- even as the Trump administration threatens to withhold  federal funding from governments it deems to have sanctuary policies.

"I think all of us as senators -- Democrats and Republicans ... do not want criminals in our neighborhoods," said Senate President Kevin de León, who wrote Senate Bill 54. "But what's extraordinary about this administration is that the focus (of immigration authorities) is no longer exclusively on violent criminal felons, rather it's on ordinary residents of this great state. It's been broadened ... to include everybody."

De León thinks SB 54 will help protect those ordinary immigrants and others, by ensuring that immigrant communities trust police and come forward to report crimes.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials would not comment on either the Steinle case or SB 54.

While California law already restricts sheriffs from holding undocumented immigrants in jail simply because of their immigration status, the bill would go even further by prohibiting law enforcement agencies in California from being involved in any immigration enforcement action. Most controversially, it would bar sheriffs, who run jails, from contacting ICE about someone in their jail, or transferring a criminal suspect to the federal agency, unless a judge orders them to do so -- or the person has a  violent or serious felony in their past.

But the Trump administration says it will punish governments with sanctuary policies by withholding federal funding. Whether the administration can do so is up in the air -- cities, including San Francisco, have sued over the threat.

State Senate Republican Joel Anderson said his concerns about the bill extend beyond the potential financial repercussions.

"It makes no distinction between people who come here to work hard, to become U.S. citizens, to those who come here to prey on others," he said.  

Anderson is among the Republicans and sheriffs who say the bill will push immigration enforcement actions out of jails and into communities -- and make law-abiding undocumented immigrants less safe.

"If we’re not allowed to contact our federal partner and these people are released into our community, they’re going to create more victims. And a lot of these victims are undocumented immigrants who live in our communities and work in our counties," said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, who serves as president of the California State Sheriffs' Association.

Youngblood said sheriffs don’t want to be immigration agents, but have to follow both state and federal laws.

And while Democrats say undocumented immigrants accused of a crime should be afforded due process under the law, Youngblood argued that many people who come through his jail are dangerous --even though they’ve never been convicted.

The bill, he said, will, "prohibit sheriffs from sharing information about a gang member being held in county jail on a murder charge, because he hasn't even been convicted yet. That’s very troubling."

But de León says that argument is troubling. Immigration enforcement shouldn’t be used to punish people for alleged crimes, he said -- the criminal justice system should.

"If there is alleged crime that has been committed and if you are prosecuted and convicted by a district attorney,  you should do your time in prison -- you shouldn't be swept up and deported. That's called criminal dumping," he said.

De León contends that’s what happened in the Kate Steinle case -- the federal government failed to do its job even after Steinle’s alleged killer repeatedly sneaked back into the U.S.

De León argues the bill will safeguard California and its economy by maintaining all residents’ trust in police and protecting people now eligible for deportation under an executive order signed by President Trump.

"The very men and women that we trust to take care of our children, the very same men and women who make our food, the very same men and women who works the fields in Tulare and Kings County and Kern County and Fresno -- who sweat under hot sun every single day -- because they are eligible by the criteria that’s been broadened by the executive order," he said.

The bill now goes to the state Assembly for consideration.