San Franciscans like to demonstrate their moral superiority by making incomprehensibly stupid gestures a matter of public policy, such as giving cash handouts to the homeless, busing asian students to black and latino majority public schools to boost test scores in failing schools, paying for public employee sex change operations, allowing men to marry other men, and making San Francisco a 'sanctuary city' where illegal immigrants are welcomed with open arms.
To show how welcome illegal immigrants are in San Francisco, the city actually uses public money to fly illegal immigrant drug dealers to their home countries lest they be deported by the Feds.
Feds probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008
San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.
The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco's policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation.
Federal authorities counter that drug kingpins are indeed exploiting the immigrants, but that the city's stance allows them to get away with "gaming the system."
San Francisco juvenile authorities have been grappling for several years with an influx of young Honduran immigrants dealing crack in the Mission District and Tenderloin.
Those who are arrested routinely say they are minors, but police suspect that many are actually adults, living communally in Oakland and other cities at the behest of drug traffickers who claim to be their relatives.
Nonetheless, city authorities have typically accepted the suspects' stories and handled the cases in Juvenile Court, where proceedings are often shielded from public scrutiny.
Unorthodox strategy
Barred by state law from sending drug offenders to the California Youth Authority and bound by a 1989 city law defining San Francisco as a sanctuary city for immigrants - meaning officials do not cooperate with federal immigration investigations - juvenile officials settled on an unorthodox strategy.
Rather than have the drug offenders deported, they have recommended that Juvenile Court judges and commissioners approve city-paid flights home to Honduras for the offenders with the aim of reuniting them with their families.
The practice, federal authorities say, does nothing to prevent offenders from coming back, while federal deportation legally bars them from ever returning. Federal officials also say U.S. law prohibits helping an illegal immigrant to cross the border, even if it is to return home.
Federal officials recently detained a San Francisco juvenile probation officer at the Houston airport, where he was accompanying two Honduran juvenile drug offenders about to board a flight to Tegucigalpa.
They questioned him for several hours before letting him go, and seized the youths and deported them.
"Our job is to uphold the nation's immigration laws," said Greg Palmore, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Although San Francisco is a sanctuary city, it's a problem whenever someone attempts to evade the law. ... Our law does not allow us to turn a blind eye to any individual who has come into this country illegally."
Feds 'flabbergasted'
Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco area, said he was "flabbergasted that the taxpayers' money was being spent for the purpose of ferrying detainees home. You have to have a perfect storm of dumb moves to have it happen."
William Siffermann, chief of San Francisco's Juvenile Probation Department, said federal agents have never specifically told his office not to send immigrants back to their home countries, but that he has stopped the practice until differences between the city and immigration authorities are resolved.
He said the city's stance is that it does not have to report illegal immigrant minors to the federal government, even if they are found in Juvenile Court to have committed a crime.
"We are not obligated to," he said. "We are abiding by the sanctuary city ordinance."
Siffermann added, "I don't believe we've done anything wrong." But he stressed that his office wants to make sure it is fulfilling its duties "in all arenas, with federal statutes, state statutes and the sanctuary city law."
Juveniles with beards
San Francisco police doubt that many of the young Hondurans they arrest on drug charges are even juveniles.
Police can report suspected adult illegal immigrants to federal authorities if they commit a crime, said Capt. Tim Hettrich, until recently the head of the narcotics unit.
So immigrant drug dealers "pass themselves off as juveniles, with a three-day growth of beard and everything else. It's frustrating," he said.
"Some of them have been arrested four or five times," Hettrich said. "That is one of the big problems with being a city of sanctuary."
He scoffed at San Francisco's strategy of returning the offenders to their home country. "They probably get the round trip and the next day, they will be right back here," Hettrich said.
Stockula said:
San Franciscans like to demonstrate their moral superiority by making incomprehensibly stupid gestures a matter of public policy, such as... allowing men to marry other men.
"Federalis" or "Federales" are agents of the federal government of Mexico. I don't think you understand the words you are using.
stockula said:
San Franciscans like to demonstrate their moral superiority by making incomprehensibly stupid gestures a matter of public policy, such as ... allowing men to marry other men...
Stockula said:
San Franciscans like to demonstrate their moral superiority by making incomprehensibly stupid gestures a matter of public policy, such as... allowing men to marry other men.
seriously?
Yeah, that's where I stopped reading. Anything that starts off that ignorant can't get any better.
stockula makes the mistake that a lot of zealots make. he entangles his points so deeply with other, more controversial views that it's almost impossible for most people to discuss the actual point. he basically goes around asking people if they still beat their wife, and then wonders why nobody will have a serious discussion about spouse abuse with him.
motorfirebox said:
stockula makes the mistake that a lot of zealots make. he entangles his points so deeply with other, more controversial views that it's almost impossible for most people to discuss the actual point. he basically goes around asking people if they still beat their wife, and then wonders why nobody will have a serious discussion about spouse abuse with him.
He doesn't wonder. It's entirely by design. He never has any intention of having an actual intellectually honest conversation. This is why attempting to engage him is silly.
motorfirebox said:
stockula makes the mistake that a lot of zealots make. he entangles his points so deeply with other, more controversial views that it's almost impossible for most people to discuss the actual point. he basically goes around asking people if they still beat their wife, and then wonders why nobody will have a serious discussion about spouse abuse with him.
He doesn't wonder. It's entirely by design. He never has any intention of having an actual intellectually honest conversation. This is why attempting to engage him is silly.
motorfirebox said:
stockula's tired anti-homosexual flaming aside (hee hee!), this does seem like a really boneheaded strategy on SF's part.
It is. This is true. I certainly won't defend it.
How so? Sure, some may not be minors, but most are, or are close enough to pass for it. They are also exploited. Why on earth should they be subjected to what is in essence an administrative sanction tantamount to a severe criminal penalty because of botched and vituperative federal policy?
These kids aren't old enough to see R rated movies but we're going to deport them for life? And even if we did, its not like we're not using "public money" to do it, and its not like they're not going to come back anyway. If there is no record of them entering the country, and they have no documentation (we fingerprint pretty much all non US nationals, hard to pretend to be sixteen if your prints are on file with a real passport) then they didn't come in through commercial transit in the first place.
This is nothing more than meaningless ideological posturing on the part of the Fed.
My heart bleeds for "exploited" illegal immigrants selling crack. Not old enough to see an R rated movie but old enough to sell crack. First it was you can't deport illrgal immigrants and now you can't even deport illegal immigrants who are selling drugs. Absurd.
motorfirebox said:
stockula makes the mistake that a lot of zealots make. he entangles his points so deeply with other, more controversial views that it's almost impossible for most people to discuss the actual point. he basically goes around asking people if they still beat their wife, and then wonders why nobody will have a serious discussion about spouse abuse with him.
He doesn't wonder. It's entirely by design. He never has any intention of having an actual intellectually honest conversation. This is why attempting to engage him is silly.
stockula
Anchorage, AK
May 2003
JUL 01, 2008 02:28 PM