Young illegal immigrants lose their San Francisco sanctuary
California's best-known sanctuary city -- a haven for illegal immigrants -- has been escorting convicted juvenile offenders back to their home countries at city expense for nearly a generation and shielding them from federal officials in the process.
But after several recent embarrassing incidents, this famously liberal enclave has been forced to reconsider how it deals with young undocumented criminals.
Ever since a city juvenile probation officer was detained by federal immigration authorities in Houston nearly seven weeks ago and questioned about two offenders he was escorting back to Honduras, the city has stopped flying such people home.
Instead, officials have increased the number sent to unsecured group homes in San Bernardino County. But then eight convicted juvenile drug dealers from Honduras walked away from facilities run by Silverlake Youth Services in recent days, creating an uproar among Inland Empire residents and officials.
"I was unaware that the city had its own foreign policy and immigration laws that superseded federal law," San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt said, referring to San Francisco. "No one should have to suffer from a poorly thought-out policy such as this."
So San Francisco officials are shifting gears again.
"Those unfortunate escapes are unacceptable and are producing no intended results and creating unintended consequences, and so that practice has also stopped," Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday. "We did this two days ago."
In an interview on the same day he announced that he would explore a run for governor, Newsom was pushed to balance the competing interests of a wide-open city with the need to sound tough on the volatile issue of immigration.
He blamed the courts in part and said the city could not be held entirely responsible for the snafus, pointing out that "every one of these transportation cases has a judicial order" sending the convicted youths "down south" or "over the border into Honduras."
"Here's the problem for me: I don't run the courts," he said.
Although the city "policy of deportation ended when this incident occurred," he said, his office must still sit down with the district attorney's office, the public defender's office and court officials to craft a process for dealing with young illegal immigrant offenders in the future.
The public defender and the judge who oversees Juvenile Court did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
