OPINION:
The suit that Kate Steinle’s parents brought against San Francisco, alleging the city was negligent for failing to keep in jail the illegal immigrant who shot their daughter — as requested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — was tossed from court, deemed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to have little merit.
And the knife to Steinle’s back twists a little harder.
It’s like her spirit is crying out from the grave for justice, and her surviving parents are fighting this, that and there for redress — and it’s all for naught.
She was killed on July 15, as she walked along a pier with her father in the sanctuary city of San Francisco. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, also known as Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, a previously deported illegal with several felonies to his name — or names — shot and killed her. At the time, Steinle was 32 years old; at the time, Lopez-Sanchez had just been released from jail — about 2½ months earlier, to be exact.
Steinle’s parents sued the city, saying it failed to let ICE officials know they were releasing Lopez-Sanchez from jail — and that in such failure, it violated a 2015 request from federal immigration authorities to notify of the illegal’s release so ICE could take him into custody. Specifically, the suit alleged the then-sheriff of San Francisco, Ross Mirkarimi, told his jail and law enforcement personnel, in a memo, that they didn’t have to give information to ICE if they didn’t want to — if, for instance, ICE didn’t have a warrant to demand the information — and that this memo, and its ensuing policy, violated law.
The judges said the city didn’t break any law.
Her parents must be gasping for air, grasping for some semblance of sanity.
This court loss came after another one in 2017, when Lopez-Sanchez was acquitted of homicide and found guilty only of the far lesser gun possession charge. Perhaps that was Steinle’s second death; this, the third.
“The tragic and unnecessary death of Steinle may well underscore the policy argument against Sheriff Mirkarimi’s decision to bar his employees from providing the release date of a many times convicted felon to ICE,” the judge’s panel wrote, the Los Angeles Times reported. “But that policy argument can be acted upon only by California’s state and municipal political branches of government, or perhaps by Congress — but not by federal judges applying California law.”
How nice.
Judges upholding the law, the nuances and specifics of the law.
The law also says illegals aren’t allowed in this country, and felons shouldn’t have guns, and previously deported felons with no rightful claim to be in America should stay out of America — and the law failed Steinle on all those points. Justice, meanwhile, says cities that shelter illegals ought to shoulder the bulk of responsibility if those illegals commit crimes above and beyond their sneaks into the country — and justice failed Steinle’s parents on that point.
What will it take for the Democrats who oh-so-love open borders to realize that open borders can be deadly?
Apparently, more than a dead 32-year-old woman, killed first in the flesh, then again and again in the spirit, in memory, by the knife of those who would protect illegals at all costs.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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