Speech #1140056361

San Francisco said no. and they released him so he could then go out and commit a murder. Why in the world would they release a man such as this when DHS has asked them to hold him? It is because San Francisco is a sanctuary city. What that means is that it is the policy of the city of San Franciscohaving commanded their local law enforcement. their police departmentto not cooperate with Federal officials seeking to prosecute immigration issues. Even when they want to cooperate. they are forbidden from cooperating. Think about how absurd this is. If Federal officials had called the San Francisco Police Department about any other kind of crimelarceny. burglary. a trademark violationthey would have been happy to cooperate. They would have cooperated. in fact. But because the crime was related to illegal immigration. the San Francisco Police Departments hands were tied. The police were forced to release the man who would then go on and kill Kate Steinle. As a father of three young children. I cant even begin to think about the pain that the Steinles just went through. and what is so maddening is that it was entirely unnecessary. Sadly. this is not the only case. as you know. According to the Department of Homeland Security. during an 8month period last year. sanctuary jurisdictionscities and counties that have adopted this policy of noncooperationhave released over 8.000 illegal immigrants they had in their custody. and 1.800 of these were later arrested for criminal acts. This includes two cities that refused to hold individuals who had been arrested for child sexual abuse. In both cases the individuals were later arrested for sexually assaulting young children. This is how outrageous this has become. For the record. let me make it clear that I completely understand that the vast majority of immigrants would not commit these crimes. That is not what this is about. But the truth of the matter is that any large group of individuals is going to have a certain number of criminals within it.