Garcia: Tread lightly on San Francisco sanctuary policy

The general rule in politics is that you should never interfere with a rival when he’s making a fool of himself.

I’m in politics only as an outside observer and analyst, which allows me to freely dispense advice to friends and foes — a sort of Dear Abby of government. So I’m going to suggest to one of the well-meaning members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that he resist his worst urges and not boldly go where no one has gone before.

That would be Supervisor David Campos, one of our rookies, who has been making noise about drafting an ordinance to change city policy that requires police to inform immigration officials when undocumented youths are charged with a felony.

Campos, who himself was once an illegal immigrant, is so sensitive about the issue that he sees the change as necessary because undocumented immigrants need protection. He also believes people should not face the threat of deportation unless they are actually convicted of a felony.

I could go to great lengths to show why Campos is completely wrong on this topic, but I need only offer two words: Edwin Ramos.
Funny that someone so touchy-feely on immigration issues would be so insensitive on this one. Campos is talking about this proposal while Ramos is in the midst of a preliminary hearing to determine if there’s enough evidence for him to stand trial for allegedly murdering a father and two of his two sons a year ago — a triple homicide that police say happened because Ramos mistook the victims for rival gang members.

Based on testimony so far, I think the odds are Ramos will stand trial. But in any event, it’s worth noting that he was here because he was allowed to stay in the country illegally — even though he had a violent gang history dating back to when he was a teenager — in part because of San Francisco’s sanctuary policies regarding minors. Waiting for someone who is charged with a felony to be convicted before immigration officials are alerted just increases the chances that a violent offender will be left on the streets.
The family of Anthony Bologna, 48, and sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, has filed a lawsuit against San Francisco, saying that its sanctuary policy contributed to their deaths. Making a similar policy official city law would be the most obvious entrant in the department of bad ideas.

Campos wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to talking about youths and immigration policy, and it’s apparently large enough to block his view of the real world. At various times and in separate forums, he has decried the mayor’s decision to alter the sanctuary policy so that potentially dangerous criminals — and yes, some of them are minors — are placed on the radar of immigration officials.

This lax attitude toward illegal immigrants must be contagious here because this week the Los Angeles Times reported on a case in which a San Francisco woman’s skull was fractured in an assault by someone named Alexander Izaguirre, who was actually working in a job-training program run by District Attorney Kamala Harris.

Izaguirre, who was here illegally, managed to stay out of prison because of his involvement in the program, and it was only after he was connected to the attack on Amanda Kiefer that he was arrested and kicked out of Back on Track — a centerpiece of Harris’ campaign to be California’s next attorney general.

Harris said the mistake to allow illegal immigrants into the program was caused by a “flaw in the design,” which essentially means she will be answering questions for months about why illegal immigrants were being trained — on The City’s dollar — for jobs they could not legally hold.

That would be enough to raise caution flags in just about any city, but, as we know, San Francisco is a city like no other. So it would appear that the desire to relax regulations on illegal immigrants accused of crimes would be an iffy prospect for the simple reason that it’s probably also illegal.

If any of our supervisors want to take on the liability from changing our policy regarding illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes, then let me suggest they agree to shoulder the sizable legal fees from all of the lawsuits they will face.
Or, perhaps they could save face by remembering the case of Edwin Ramos.