SAN FRANCISCO — The attacks on San Francisco and other cities with similar immigration policies began moments after a jury acquitted the man charged with killing Kate Steinle of murder and manslaughter.
President Trump called the verdict a “complete travesty of justice” and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanded cities like San Francisco scrap immigration policies that bar local officials from cooperating with federal deportation efforts.
Thousands of Twitter users vowed to #BoycottSanFrancisco.
“San Francisco is and always will be a Sanctuary City,” said Ellen Canale, a spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee.
Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was released from San Francisco’s jail despite a federal request to detain him for deportation several weeks before Steinle was killed on July 1, 2015.
He had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Steinle was fatally shot in the back in 2015. Garcia Zarate said the shooting was an accident, a defense the jury appeared to believe. San Francisco Deputy District Attorney Diana Garcia argued the shooting was a first-degree murder.
The San Francisco jury did convict Jose Ines Garcia Zarate of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Steinle was shot while walking with her father and a family friend on a San Francisco pier popular with tourists. Garcia Zarate said he was sitting on the pier when he found a gun under a chair. He said the gun was wrapped in a T-shirt and accidentally fired when he picked it up.
Before the shooting, Garcia Zarate had finished a federal prison sentence for illegal re-entry into the United States and had been transferred to San Francisco’s jail in March 2015 to face a 20-year-old charge for selling marijuana.
The sheriff’s department released him a few days after prosecutors dropped the marijuana charge, despite a request from federal immigration officials to detain him for deportation.
San Francisco is known as a “sanctuary city” because its policies bar local police from helping federal authorities identify and deport immigrants that came to the U.S. illegally.
Jurors left the courtroom Thursday without comment and the judge sealed their identities.
Steinle’s father, Jim, who was walking with her on the pier when she was killed, told the San Francisco Chronicle that “justice was rendered, but it was not served.”
“We’re just shocked — saddened and shocked … that’s about it,” he said in an interview the family said would be its last.
Michael Cardoza, a longtime San Francisco Bay Area lawyer said the prosecutor made a mistake by asking the jury to convict Garcia Zarate of first-degree murder despite strong evidence that the bullet ricocheted around 90 feet before fatally striking Steinle on July 1, 2015.