The statement offered by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department (SFSD) in response to the murder of Kate Steinle at the hands of an illegal immigrant contained inaccurate information, a Senate GOP aide has revealed to Breitbart News.
Specifically, in its statement SFSD claimed that there was no “judicial order of removal” for the suspect Francisco Sanchez. “That is flat out wrong and flies in the face of all the facts that are in the public domain right now,” the aide told Breitbart News.
Francisco Sanchez — a multiple deportee, multiple-felon illegal immigrant — was charged with the murder of Kate Steinle less than three months after he was released from the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department when the city declined to prosecute him for a drug charge. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE had lodged an immigration detainer, requesting notification before Sanchez’ release so that ICE could take custody.
San Francisco, however, is a so-called sanctuary city and the detainer was not honored.
In its release on July 3, SFSD said that while there was an ICE detention request, there was not an active ICE warrant or “judicial order of removal for him,” which the GOP aide explained to Breitbart News could not be accurate.
“There were at least five deportations, at least one of which was ordered by an immigration judge, and since then [Sanchez] has had his removal order reinstated multiple times. On top of that he had just finished serving a sentence in federal prison for illegal reentry into the United States, which would have required a federal judge to make a determination that this individual had been removed from the United States previously,” the aide said.
The aide continued, saying the conclusion that should have been inescapable when they ran Sanchez’s lengthy criminal record.
“If they ran his rap sheet before they released him they would have seen, very clearly, his multiple convictions, including, most recently this conviction for illegal reentry,” the aide said. “You don’t have to be a legal expert to understand that the person had been ordered removed previously if they had a conviction for illegal re-entry. It flies in the face of logic.”
SFSD did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Additionally Wednesday, Center for Immigration Studies expert Jessica Vaughan reported at National Review on another unusual aspect of the San Francisco case.
Deputy officers within the San Francisco department were so concerned about the release of illegal-alien criminals that they started contacting ICE on the sly. According to a local news report, [San Francisco sheriff Ross] Mirkarimi got wind of this in March, about the time that Sanchez was in custody, and promptly blasted out a memo stating that only he could deal with ICE.
“That is extremely rare,” the aide noted to Breitbart.