The fact that a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life, Kathryn Steinle, 32 years old, was cut down by an illegal alien on Pier 14 in San Francisco should surprise no one.
Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez,, an illegal alien from Mexico, most recently of Texas, simply shot Kathryn Steinle for no apparent reason as she and her family walked along waterfront on Pier 14.
From all accounts, Kathryn was an amazing young woman. She worked at Medtronic, a medical technology company in the Bay area, and loved traveling and doing charity work, including hosting a fundraising dinner recently for patients with multiple sclerosis.
Powerful California Democrats — Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris — had previously celebrated San Francisco’s storied flouting of federal law, bragging about how they had made the trademark City on the Bay, a Sanctuary City for illegal criminals. Now they are scrambling for cover.
When Newsom was San Francisco’s mayor, and Harris was San Francisco’s District Attorney, both enthusiastically championed the most radical sanctuary policies in the country.
That was until a triple-murder took some bloom off the rose.
On June 8th, 2008, an MS-13 Gang Member named Edwin Ramos — also an illegal alien — was released onto the streets of San Francisco instead of into federal custody for deportation. Within 48 hours, he obtained a gun and murdered three innocent people: a father, Tony Bologna, and his two sons, Matthew and Michael, who made the fateful decision to play baseball on a beautiful summer afternoon. Tony’s widow, Danielle Bologna, blamed their deaths on San Francisco’s sanctuary policy.
While Mayor Gavin Newsom tinkered around the edges of the sanctuary policy, Kamala Harris refused to grant justice to the Bologna family due to her own personal opposition to the death penalty.
But that’s not where it ended.
San Francisco’s flamboyant Assemblyman Tom Ammiano — best known for his raucous wit and inappropriately raunchy comments on the floor — pushed to make California a Sanctuary State for illegal alien criminals. In 2011, he introduced AB1081, which I fought against vigorously during my time in the Assembly, noting Jerry Brown’s opposition to sanctuary policy as Attorney General in my floor speech.
I predicted that more people would die under policies that forbid local, state and county law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Then after Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it, Ammiano brought it back to life in the next legislative session as AB4–the Trust Act. And on October 5th, 2013, Brown signed it into law.
And now, the chickens have come home to roost.
Usually the media wouldn’t much care about a seemingly random killing in what has become one of the most violent cities in California, especially since the woman was white — not a minority killed by a cop — but Donald Trump made it an issue.
Now, California Democrats are looking for someone else to blame, so the name-calling has begun, and Trump is the predictable target. After all, he is the one exposing what they’d rather not discuss — that not all illegal aliens are simply people looking for a better life, and some are ruthless, cold-blooded killers.
Funny how defensive SF Mayor Ed Lee’s spokesman sounds, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:
“A woman’s life was tragically taken away, and right now Mayor Lee is focused on understanding the circumstances and facts around this tragedy and this man’s release,” Christine Falvey said in an e-mail. “Mr. Trump’s opportunism and offensive anti-immigrant rhetoric have nothing to contribute to that effort.”
If it were not for the passionate defense of sanctuary policies, and their support for expanding them statewide by Democrats like Harris, illegal alien killers like Sanchez, and presumably cop-killer Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte — who gunned down two Sheriff’s deputies last year — might have been stopped before they committed such heinous crimes.
The sad thing is, that while this latest killing may have been random, it was both 100 percent predictable and 100 percent preventable.
If San Francisco authorities had respected the rights of its citizens to be safe walking the streets of their own city, and simply turned this tseven-time felon, who had been deported five times, over to authorities, Kathryn Steinle would still be alive today.
Sanchez was in custody in March on drug charges, but because San Francisco refuses to abandon its explicit sanctuary policies, was turned loose on the streets of San Francisco in April instead of being turned over to immigration authorities.
Congratulations to Brown, Harris, Newsom and Ammiano.
This killing is the result of your policy of coddling dangerous criminals, and your rampant obsession with protecting criminal illegal aliens is now on display for all the public to see. Don’t look now, but the blood on your hands is dripping onto your Gucci loafers.
How many more innocent Americans have to die at the hands of illegal aliens before Californians wise up and throw these three co-conspirators out of office?
All except Brown will be running for office in 2016. It remains to be seen if the GOP will go Trump on this sanctuary issue, and skewer them, or if Republicans will continue their policy of planned irrelevance.
Former California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is the host of the Tim Donnelly Show. Email him at Tim at TimDonnellyShow.com
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