The father of a 32-year-old woman shot dead in San Francisco at the hands of an undocumented immigrant with a long criminal rap sheet plans to testify before Congress on Tuesday. The hearing is likely to further inflame the debate over whether cities should do more to enforce federal immigration laws.
Jim Steinle, whose daughter Kathryn Steinle died in his arms along a tourist-heavy San Francisco pier earlier this month, is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday as lawmakers weigh whether local law enforcement authorities must be forced to cooperate with federal agents.
RELATED: Immigration takes center stage at Netroots Nation
At the center of the firestorm is the question of whether Kathryn Steinle’s death could have been prevented. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an undocumented immigrant who had been deported five times earlier and convicted of seven felonies, has pleaded not guilty in her murder. He was on the lam from a 20-year-old federal drug warrant at the time of the shooting and had been released from a San Francisco County jail on a separate charge in April — even after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked that Sanchez continued to be detained until he could be picked up for deportation.
Donald Trump became one of the first presidential candidates to place the tragic shooting in the context of an already fiery immigration debate, shining the focus on sanctuary cities that for decades have adopted laws welcoming to undocumented immigrants.
Sanctuary cities emerged in the mid-1980s, when refugees fleeing civil war in Central America were in need of a safe haven. In that same spirit, local officials have since enacted laws seen as welcoming toward immigrant communities, many barring local authorities from coordinating with ICE in efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.
Local officials have seen their hands further tied since a federal court last year found it unconstitutional to comply with so-called ICE detainers without a warrant. That means undocumented immigrants can not be detained for longer than their sentences in order for federal immigration officials to have time to come pick them up. Unwilling to risk being sued over the ICE detainers, as many as 300 municipalities have rejected the policy entirely.
RELATED: Martin O’Malley lays out broad immigration plan
Police Chief Tom Manger, president of Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, has been an outspoken critic of efforts to make local law enforcement fill in the gaps on federal immigration laws. He is also scheduled to testify before the committee Tuesday and has said that forcing local cops to crack down on immigrants wouldn’t work. That’s because police must build trust with immigrant communities in order for them to report crime and so law enforcement officials can do their jobs.
“That is very problematic for local law enforcement. It will do much more harm than good,” Manger told reporters on Monday. “The local law enforcement does not engage in immigration enforcement because we know that it would be counter productive to the safety of our communities.”








