It turned out the man was free and on the streets specifically because the San Francisco Sheriff declined to turn him over to ICE because of the county’s “Sanctuary City” policy.
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– Lawmakers could change the Tort Claims Act to ensure that counties are financially responsible for the actions of undocumented immigrants who are released despite the existence of an ICE detainer request.
A few 300 counties and cities have officially restricted the extent that they work with ICE, according to a count late previous year by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. The shooting sparked controversy when federal immigration officers accused the city’s policy of allowing a “preventable” crime to happen.
Last Tuesday, San Francisco reaffirmed its commitment to that policy, despite the controversy.
Abbott was the long-serving Attorney General and takes legal issues quite seriously.
The lawsuit was filed Monday, the same day Abbott made public a letter to Sheriff Lupe Valdez. The letter threatened to penalize Dallas County over the sheriff’s revised policy to no longer honor all federal immigration detention holds. People who committed minor offenses aren’t held for up to an additional 48 hours for agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Brandi Grissom is covering the story for the Dallas Morning News.
Enacting laws that make it illegal for a Sheriff’s Department to not honor a federal immigration detainer request.
“The letter doesn’t sound like he’s threatening any immediate action himself”, she says. “What he can do is use his office as a bully pulpit, to encourage the passage of legislation that he wants to see”.
Abbott said Monday the state must prohibit policies that “promote sanctuary to people in this state illegally”.
“In a few ways he’s sort of laying down the gauntlet”, Grissom says. Last week in Congress, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill that would have punished jurisdictions that don’t share immigration information or cooperate with federal requests. It’s typically used to describe local governments that ban police from asking about a person’s immigration status.
“Immigration detainers issued by ICE merely constitute a request that the Dallas County Sheriff’s office provide federal immigration authorities an opportunity to collect and remove criminal immigrants in their custody before they are released – a longstanding policy honored by the Dallas County Sheriff’s office up until Sheriff Valdez’s decision”, Abbott said.
Gov. Greg Abbott promised as much in warning Valdez to rethink her position. The sheriff made her policy change after consultations with local lawyers.
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Abbott cited the example of Kate Steinle who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant who was released because a sheriff decided not to honor ICE’s requests.
