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The Daily Signal
The Facts About
Illegal Immigrants and Crimes
Diana Stancy
July 06, 2015
An illegal immigrant federal officials claim was convicted of seven
felonies and deported five times shot a woman on the San Francisco
waterfront last Wednesday.
Francisco Sanchez, who was arrested an hour after the attack, admitted
he shot 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle, but claimed the incident was an
“accident.” According to Sanchez, he discovered the gun wrapped inside
a shirt on the pier. After picking up the gun, he claims it “started to
fire on its own.”
“All I want to say is that in the courts, I want them to give me the
punishment I deserve and get it over with as soon as possible,” Sanchez
said in an interview with KGO-TV on Sunday.
Sanchez isn’t the only illegal immigrant, however, to be convicted and
still living in the United States.
According to a recent study released from the Center for Immigration
Studies, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released
30,558 criminally-convicted illegal immigrants, with a total of 79,059
convictions altogether, in 2014.
Furthermore, the CIS report shows that among the 904,000 illegal
immigrants who have ignored orders to leave the U.S., approximately
167,527 of these are convicted criminal immigrants.
Likewise, CIS’s April 2015 statistics indicate ICE has only arrested
11,983 at-large convicted criminal immigrants—despite the fact 168,000
criminal immigrants were identified.
The concern is that these convicted criminal immigrants will commit
crimes upon being released, as in Sanchez’s case.
“The long-term ramifications are continued crime inflicted upon U.S.
citizens,” Marguerite Telford, director of communications at CIS, said
in an interview with The Daily Signal in June. “So the [Obama]
administration’s catch and release policy means these criminal aliens
are free to commit additional crimes.”
Furthermore, San Francisco does not have strict immigration policies.
San Francisco is a “sanctuary city,” meaning the city does not seek
undocumented immigrants and enforce deportation. According to
David Inserra, policy analyst of homeland security and cybersecurity at
The Heritage Foundation, sanctuary cities do “as little as possible” to
enforce immigration laws.
“The result is that immigrants who should be removed, either because
they are here illegally or they have committed some other crime that
makes them removable, are not deported,” said Inserra said. “In the
case of criminal, illegal immigrants, the case to remove these
individuals is even stronger, yet some cities do not value the
enforcement of the law, to the detriment of their own communities.”
Sanchez had been in custody of the San Francisco County Jail for
drug-related charges in March of 2015, but was released in April. ICE
spokesperson Virginia Kice said that ICE filed a detainer for Sanchez
so that the organization would be aware if he were released from
custody. She said ICE received no notification, according to the
Associated Press.
But San Francisco County Sheriff’s legal counsel, Freya Horne, said
that there must be an active warrant in order for the city to maintain
custody of a criminal immigrant.
“It’s not legal to hold someone on a request to detain. This is not
just us. This is a widely adopted position,” Horne said.
Horne said no active warrant was filed.
“It’s a tragedy,” she said. “We all recognize that. But we followed
city policy.”
Read this and other articles with links at The Daily Signal
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