EXCLUSIVE: Americans Shouldn’t Be Subsidizing Sanctuary Cities

On July 1, as the rest of the country was preparing for a long holiday weekend, 32-year-old Kate Steinle was gunned down while going for a walk with her dad.

“It was an accident,” the gunman says. “I found the gun,” he says.

The gunman, an illegal alien with seven felony convictions, has been deported from America five times. Undeterred by America’s immigration laws, he kept returning. It’s not hard to see why. During a recent arrest, just two months prior to shooting and killing Kate, Francisco Sanchez was in federal custody. San Francisco authorities asked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hand Sanchez over for drug charges. ICE did just that, on the condition that if they let Sanchez go, local authorities would hand him back over to ICE.

Local authorities, however, didn’t hand him over. As a so-called “sanctuary city,” Sanchez, who was on probation and in the country illegally, was set free. “Federal detention orders are not a legal basis to hold someone,” according to city officials. Now Kate is dead.

Kate was buried last week. No one from the White House attended her funeral. No one from the White House gave remarks of sadness. No one from the current administration has commented on the senseless murder of a young, innocent woman gunned down by an illegal alien.

The President has not only chosen which laws he will enforce, he now chooses to only show support for Americans when it fits his narrative. Marc Thiessen said it best on The Kelley File: “In all those other cases he had liberal policy points he wanted to make … The policies he supports are the ones that got this woman killed.”

One of the President’s greatest failures has been his unwillingness to secure the border. I will continue to fight to secure our borders and implement common sense policies aimed at reducing violence and the flow of illegal narcotics, firearms, people, and money across our borders. If the President won’t get serious about protecting our borders, then members of Congress and the states must find other ways to do it for him.

That’s why I am a co-sponsor of three immigration bills to protect the American people. The first, H.R. 3011, Kate’s Law, would create a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for any illegal alien reentering the country after being deported. The second, H.R. 3009, Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities, restricts federal funding to sanctuary cities so that the American people are not subsidizing local law enforcement agencies that refuse to comply with federal law.  The third, H.R. 399, Secure Our Borders First Act, requires that the Secretary of Homeland Security gain, and maintain, operational control of the international borders of the United States.

We can’t get serious about immigration reform until we stop people from crossing the border illegally.

President Obama has wielded his “mighty pen” once to show those who want to enter the country illegally they can go ahead and do it because this President won’t stop them. Congratulations, Mr. President. Your mighty pen got a young woman killed.