House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she supports San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy even after authorities say it may have directly led to the murder of a young woman in the city earlier this month.
“I support the sanctuary,” she said, while also calling the killing tragic.
Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who had recently moved to San Francisco, was killed while walking with her father. Police say the suspect in the killing was an illegal immigrant who’d been shipped to San Francisco and then released rather than turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
San Francisco operates under a sanctuary policy that mandates its authorities not cooperate with ICE requests to hold and turn over illegal immigrants.
Between 200 and 300 cities, counties and states have sanctuary-type policies limiting cooperation.
In the wake of the Steinle killing, Republicans in Congress are pushing to force cooperation by denying some federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions.
The Homeland Security spending bill, which passed through the Appropriations Committee earlier this week, included one version of that policy. It passed on a 28-21 vote in committee.
The panel also voted to require ICE to keep in custody all immigrants it designates as Priority 1 or Priority 2 — meaning the most serious criminals. Currently, ICE releases some of those, citing either court orders or its own discretion.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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