This action parallels Sheriff Michael Hennessey’s decision to release illegal aliens [...]]]> Infamous sanctuary city San Francisco has added to its list of criminal-friendly policies: interim Mayor Ed Lee has expanded the illegal alien protection. He announced that the city would no longer report illegal immigrant youths to federal authorities when they are arrested on felony charges.

This action parallels Sheriff Michael Hennessey’s decision to release illegal aliens in his jail rather than turn them over to ICE under the Secure Communities program, if the perps’ crimes were deemed minor in the Sheriff’s opinion.

Meanwhile, the Texas legislature is moving toward banning sanctuary cities in the state.

On the subject of sanctuary cities, a Rasmussen poll published this week showed the policy is not popular among voters: 59% Favor Cutoff of Federal Funds to Sanctuary Cities.

City revises its stance on illegal immigrant youths, San Francisco Chronicle, May 11, 2011

San Francisco no longer will report to immigration authorities juveniles suspected of being in the United States illegally when they are arrested on a felony charge if they can show they have family ties to the Bay Area, are enrolled in school and are not repeat offenders, Mayor Ed Lee said Tuesday.

The edict creates a middle ground between the hard-line position of Lee’s predecessor, Gavin Newsom, who directed city law enforcement officers to report all arrested juveniles to federal authorities for possible deportation, and the Board of Supervisors, which backed a more liberal policy.

Supervisors passed a law in 2009 intended to prevent the city from automatically cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless the juvenile had been convicted of a felony – not just arrested. Newsom vetoed the law and the board overrode the veto, but he refused to enforce it.

“I’ve had to take care in balancing the issue of public safety and also due process,” Lee said.

He said his policy, revealed during his “question time” before the Board of Supervisors, reflects the spirit and values of San Francisco’s 22-year-old city sanctuary policy, which aims to create a safe refuge for immigrants, whether documented or not.

Bittersweet moment
Lee’s policy, which will be carried out by the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department, was met with a combination of appreciation and disappointment by immigrant rights advocates and supervisors who back the more liberal policy adopted by the board but blocked by Newsom.

“It’s a bittersweet moment,” said Angela Chan, staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, for which the mayor once worked. “We appreciate Mayor Lee for taking a great first step, but it doesn’t go far enough.”

Several supervisors echoed that sentiment.

“As much as we appreciate that step being taken, we still will not have full compliance with a law that was duly enacted by this Board of Supervisors,” said Supervisor David Campos. “Full compliance with the law that we enacted means giving every child in San Francisco who interacts with the criminal justice system due process.”

Lee said he feels “quite comfortable” with his policy. He crafted the idea after discussions with civil rights attorneys and San Francisco’s top law enforcement officials.

Weighing the risks
William Sifferman, the chief juvenile probation officer and the person charged with carrying out the policy, said young people who have recognizable family ties to the community and who are enrolled in school are least at risk of committing serious, violent crimes, he said.

“I don’t think public safety will be imperiled” by the policy shift, he said.
Concerns have been raised that San Francisco’s city sanctuary policy was used as a shield by drug traffickers, who used undocumented juveniles to carry out their illicit dealings.

Since 2008, Sifferman’s agency reported all 159 minors arrested on felony charges to ICE. Of those, 110 had felony convictions, he said.

When the debate over San Francisco’s immigration policy heated up, Newsom said one reason he took a tougher position was to protect city law enforcement personnel from possible federal prosecution, which the U.S. attorney’s office warned could happen if the city didn’t comply with federal immigration rules.

Under a microscope
Lee hopes his policy will withstand federal scrutiny. Sifferman said no disciplinary action will be taken against officers who decide on their own to report to federal authorities suspected undocumented immigrants with whom they come in contact.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE, wouldn’t speak directly to the mayor’s new policy directive but did say that enforcement would continue to be aimed at individuals involved in serious crimes.

“ICE’s immigration enforcement priorities focus on the identification and removal of foreign nationals who pose a public safety threat,” she said.

Lee’s announcement comes as Sheriff Michael Hennessey recently announced that he plans to start releasing undocumented immigrants held in county jail for minor offenses, even if federal immigration officials request that they be held.

If San Francisco had not been a hopelessly foolish sanctuary city, coddling criminal illegal aliens, then [...]]]> Look out San Francisco (and others)! Your fat checks from Congress may be pruned back entirely if freshman Congressman Lou Barletta manages to pass his new legislation, which would end federal funding to cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws.

If San Francisco had not been a hopelessly foolish sanctuary city, coddling criminal illegal aliens, then some terrible crimes might have been prevented. Probably the worst illegal alien crime was the murder of the father and two sons of the Bologna family, shot by previously arrested alien gangster Edwin Ramos who had not been deported despite the violence of his earlier crimes.

Illegal alien sanctuary cities may be a cushy deal for foreign criminals where they can avoid justice, but the policy is disastrous indeed for public safety.

The liberal politicians who run sanctuary cities are not swayed by horrific preventable crimes which cause enormous human suffering, so perhaps removing their money is the only way to get their attention.

Barletta bill would defund sanctuary cities, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, May 4, 2011

WASHINGTON – Focusing his first solo legislative effort on an issue that gained him and Hazleton national attention, Republican Rep. Lou Barletta today said he will introduce a bill seeking to strip all federal funding from “sanctuary” cities that fail to enforce federal immigration laws.

The former Hazleton mayor and freshman member of Congress also said he is forming an “Immigration Reform Caucus” that he hopes other freshmen lawmakers will join.

Barletta said at a Capitol Hill news conference that his bill, which he expects to formally introduce within a few weeks, will be designed to “crack down on cities whose elected officials have willfully chosen not to enforce immigration policy by withholding all federal funding from them as long as their sanctuary policies are in place.”

Saying that there are more than 100 “sanctuary” cities nationwide, Barletta added, “I want to know how much they get from the American taxpayer.”

Barletta noted at the news conference that next month is the fifth anniversary of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act ordinance adopted by Hazleton in 2006 while Barletta was mayor. The ordinance, which has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal district court and a federal appeals court, sought to fine landlords who rented to illegal immigrants and penalize employers who hired illegal immigrants. Hazleton was the first city in the country to pass such a measure, and Arizona later followed on a statewide level.

Barletta said he still hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the Hazleton law and uphold its constitutionality.

Barletta said he is tentatively titling his federal legislation the Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Act. He said he has asked the Congressional Research Service to compile a list of sanctuary cities and estimate how much in federal taxpayer dollars each city receives.

Sanctuary cities, to varying degrees, choose to not focus their law enforcement efforts on tracking and arresting illegal immigrants or don’t turn over illegal immigrants to federal authorities based solely on their immigration status. San Francisco, for instance, adopted a policy in 1989 that illegal immigrants arrested on non-felony charges would not be reported to federal immigration authorities.

Barletta said that he and other city and state officials who sought to more strictly enforce federal immigration laws were sued by federal officials who spent taxpayer dollars to do so – and that it’s only right to take away taxpayer dollars – for anything from federal housing grants to road and sewer repairs – from cities that choose not to enforce federal immigration laws.

“Local elected officials who choose to ignore enforcement of fed immigration policies are aiding and assisting illegal aliens and it is illegal to aid and abet those who are in this country illegally,” Barletta said at the news conference. “They should not receive millions or even billions of tax dollars as a reward.”

Barletta said he has not yet identified co-sponsors for his bill or which freshmen members will join his immigration reform caucus.

I’ve been listening to the John and Ken show for updates; one report was the [...]]]> In Los Angeles, the shooting of a drunk Guatemalan national with assorted IDs who was threatening people with a knife has resulted in two days of rioting. The drunk was shot dead after he lunged at a cop with the knife.

I’ve been listening to the John and Ken show for updates; one report was the guy (Manuel Jamines is but one of his several names) threatened a woman with a stroller (2pm hour, Sept 8).

Is the reaction of the city to clamp down on an area that has become a third-world enclave of illegal aliens unlawfully vending on the sidewalk?

Of course not. The aliens are being coddled with a warm and wonderful community meeting to hear their complaints about the police. The foreigners demonstrated their ire against law enforcement officers by throwing eggs and bottles (heh) at the Ramparts LAPD station.

Sensitive hispanic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has assembled a stellar line-up for the complaint-fest, including PD Chief Charlie Beck, Councilman Ed Reyes and consul generals of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico.

Wouldn’t an ICE strike force be more appropriate? Oh, wait, I forgot that LA is a sanctuary city where foreign lawbreakers are pampered, and public safety is NOT job #1.

Another point of interest is how illegal aliens are like catnip to cop-hating communists:

Self-styled communists helped fuel Westlake clash with police, Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2010

When the Los Angeles Police Department faced hundreds of protesters on the streets of the Westlake District, some were people drawn to the event from other parts of the city for political reasons.

Twenty-two people were arrested Tuesday night after protesters clashed with police near a vigil for Manuel Jamines, a Guatamalan-born day laborer fatally shot Sunday by an officer who said Jamines refused to drop a knife.

Among those arrested was Jubilee Shine, 40, a South Los Angeles activist who heads the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police. Shine said he was arrested on 6th Street near Bonnie Brae Street just before 10 p.m.

He said he arrived in the area about 9:30 p.m. and was walking toward a crowd of demonstrators at the corner of 6th Street and Burlington Avenue when the crowd bolted toward him.

“People just started to split,” Shine said.

He said he turned to run but was ordered to the ground and handcuffed. Police have not released the names of those arrested, but Shine said the protesters with whom he shared a jail cell Tuesday night were all Central American or Mexican immigrants who live in and around Westlake.

“From what I could tell, everyone there was local from that neighborhood,” he said.

Some of the earlier unrest appeared to have been fueled by political activists from other parts of the city. About a dozen people who appeared to be affiliated with the Revolutionary Community Party handed out literature about its beliefs and other cases of officer-involved shootings, and chanted messages over bullhorns about a communist revolution.

Meanwhile, demonstrators from the neighborhood chanted, “Police are racists and killers!”

Ahem. When bystanders were threatened by a dangerous armed drunk, they phoned the police, not a commie community activist.

Continuing. . .

As the night wore on, protesters clashed with police. Some, including a boy who appeared no older than 13, hurled rocks, bottles and eggs at officers and at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart station building.

Some debris was thrown at officers from apartment house roofs. Other people burned trash bins in the street. Several said they planned to continue their demonstrations in coming days.

“We’re not going to stop,” said a man who on Tuesday night was standing in a crowd of about 200 chanting protesters near the corner of Union Avenue and 6th Street.

Police are hoping a community meeting near MacArthur Park, planned for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, will help defuse tension after a second consecutive night of violence in the neighborhood. The meeting is to be held at John Leichty Middle School at 650 S. Union Ave. [. . .]

Police showed photographs of the bloodied knife, with blade that is about 6 inches long when opened, that they say Jamines, 37, was holding at the time of the shooting. Investigators are testing the blood to see whose it is, the LAPD said.

Beck said the area where the incident occurred “is not an easy place to police,” in part because of its large immigrant population and widespread illegal vending.

Why not clean out the lawbreaking behavior then? Once again, authorities have two different systems of law enforcement: the one for responsible citizens is strict, while treatment of lawbreaking foreigners is permissive, like they were children.

The result is a growing sense of entitlement despite their illegal status, as the riots illustrate.

Below, local aliens lovingly memorialized the violent drunk who threatened women and police with a knife.

Immigrant ’sanctuaries’ rouse opponents’ wrath, LA Times, July 25, 2010

Reporting from Washington — Critics of the Obama administration’s decision to sue Arizona over its new law to control illegal immigration accuse the government of overlooking a more obvious [...]]]> When the press presents the objections of citizens to sanctuary cities, it certainly doesn’t use the strongest arguments.

Immigrant ’sanctuaries’ rouse opponents’ wrath, LA Times, July 25, 2010

Reporting from Washington — Critics of the Obama administration’s decision to sue Arizona over its new law to control illegal immigration accuse the government of overlooking a more obvious target: the dozens of cities that called themselves a “sanctuary” for immigrants.

“Everyone has noticed the hypocrisy of the government going after Arizona and ignoring the sanctuary cities,” said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “They have it exactly backwards. Arizona is applying federal law, and sanctuary cities are violating it.”

Justice Department lawyers on Thursday asked a judge in Phoenix to block Arizona’s law from going into effect on the grounds it interferes with federal immigration policy. The law is due to take effect in the coming week.

The Justice Department lawyers say the government wants to catch and deport criminal immigrants, but it does not wish to take custody of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are otherwise abiding by the law.

Right, as if unlawfully occupying American jobs and using stolen Social Security numbers (a felony) makes the aliens “otherwise abiding by the law.”

But worse than that is the threat to public safety when the most violent foreign criminals are treated like privileged characters, which is what happens in sanctuary cities.

Heather MacDonald explained how the policy is seriously hazardous to public safety by allowing known criminals to roam free:

The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave, City-Journal, Winter 2004

LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang members all the time—flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to garden-variety illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are only committing a misdemeanor). “But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can’t touch him,” laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop him, such as an observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him—but not for the immigration felony.

The most important argument against alien sanctuary is the increasing list of crime victims, including Los Angeles high school football star Jamiel Shaw (shown) who was killed by an illegal alien gangster one day after the criminal was released from jail without being deported.

In 2008, San Francisco father Tony Bologna and his two sons were murdered by an illegal alien gangster with a record of violence who was similarly allowed back on the street without being deported.

There are other cases of Americans being killed in preventable crimes — many by previously arrested drunk driving illegal aliens. Sadly, the MSM is incapable of connecting the dots of causality.

There is NO evidence that illegals speak up with evidence against criminals, which is the bogus reason given by many sanctuary supporters; the policy is promoted because the open-borders extremists do NOT care that the program helps violent criminals to stay and commit more crimes against innocent citizens. To them, open borders is an issue that supercedes the rule of law.