The case makes liberals unhappy, because it is unsettling to their naive idea that illegals should be protected from deportation. Of course, if Margos had been given a one-way trip to Tegucigalpa, Ramirez’ two teenaged daughters would still have a mom who was alive.
Geraldo Lopez, the victim’s ex-husband and father of the girls, wants to know why the illegal alien wasn’t deported.
Meanwhile, legislation to make California a sanctuary state with little immigration enforcement is plowing through the legislature. SB54 would “prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies, including school police and security departments, from using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes” — a bill of criminal rights for foreign lawbreakers.
Man wanted for deportation allegedly kills girlfriend, exposing complex debate, San Francisco Chronicle, August 31, 2017When Santa Rosa police officers jailed a man in early August for allegedly abusing his girlfriend, they worried the violence might escalate and obtained an emergency order barring him from contacting the woman.
But the man, Nery Israel Estrada Margos, faced a larger impediment to seeing his girlfriend. Federal immigration agents wanted to take custody of him and deport him to his native Guatemala.
Nevertheless, Estrada Margos was released the day after his arrest when he posted bail. He soon returned to the apartment he shared with his girlfriend of nine months, Veronica Cabrera Ramirez. And on Aug. 18, authorities said, he walked into the lobby of the Santa Rosa Police Department and confessed he had killed her.
With Estrada Margos, 38, now accused of murder, Sonoma County sheriff’s officials say they did in fact notify immigration authorities of his impending release — but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, says the heads-up came too late.
The tangled circumstances behind the release have infuriated the victim’s family and raise new questions about how local jails across California cooperate with immigration agents.
More than two years after a man who was released from jail in San Francisco despite being wanted for deportation killed Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s Pier 14, the issue remains politically and emotionally charged. It is the subject of shifting local policies, legislative efforts in Sacramento and threats from the Trump administration against local governments that have sanctuary policies.
Some advocates for immigrants believe counties shouldn’t cooperate at all with the ICE, in order to build trust with immigrant communities. But Cabrera Ramirez’s ex-husband said he doesn’t understand why a potentially dangerous man would be released when another option existed.
“If the county kept this guy in jail, my ex-wife wouldn’t have died. This could be avoided,” said Gerardo Lopez, 50, of Rohnert Park, who has two daughters ages 16 and 17 with Cabrera Ramirez, who was 42 and worked in a nursing home. “This guy shouldn’t be out on the streets and put other people’s lives in danger. I don’t get why they would leave this guy out on the streets.”
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