Sanctuary City debate in the Central Coast following Pier 14 shooting

The shooting of a San Francisco woman on Pier 14 last week has started a debate about cites classified as “Sanctuary Cities.”

Department of Homeland Security records show that Francisco Sanchez, the man arrested for the shooting, had been deported five times.

San Francisco officials did not tell federal officials that he was released from custody because it was a “Sanctuary City” for undocumented immigrants.

This debate has carried over to Sanctuary Cities on the Central Coast.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart says a Sanctuary City does not recognize or enforce federal immigration laws. Hart also says his deputies won’t arrest someone on the basis of their immigration status.

Hart also said that the Secure Communities Law was originally intended for serious felons, but later anybody who was in the Homeland Security U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I-C-E) database was being.

Over the last several years cities and counties including Santa Cruz and Watsonville as well as Monterey County pulled back contact with ICE.

Yet, Homeland Security does have the right to check the finger print database to see which areas have undocumented immigrants in custody.

ICE may come down to the county jail several times a month waiting for undocumented immigrants who have completed serving their time.

“We will not hold somebody unlawfully past their release date. When a judge says you are to release somebody on a certain date then that’s when we release them,” said Hart.

Police say it is important for Watsonville to be a Sanctuary City.

“We have a lot of undocumented immigrants that work and live in our city. With that said we try to build a good relationship with them but we can’t do that if we continually go after them and try to arrest them.” said Lt. Saul Gonzales with the Watsonville Police Department.

If ICE were to do a raid in Watsonville they’d be on their own, unless the undocumented immigrant committed a violent crime Watsonville police says.

According to Hart, it’s hard to say if the local policies will change because of the Pier 14 shooting.

“I have children of my own, I can’t imagine the grief that that family is going through right now., but I do think that we can’t take one terrible case and rethink where we are at the local level with our immigration policies,” Hart says.

However Sheriff Hart did make clear that someone would absolutely not be released from custody for any sort of violent crime.