Sanctuary Cities Are Harmful to Your Health

Written by Chuck Floyd on 2008-08-07T20:40:30+00:00

Judicial Watch filed a California Public Records request last week with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department to obtain arrest and booking records related to Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien who was charged with a June 22, 2008, triple murder of three innocent American citizens.

We want: “All public records concerning or relating to any arrest and/or booking of Edwin Ramos.”

For those of you unfamiliar with this story, Ramos gunned down Tony Bologna and his sons Michael and Matthew with an AK-47 following a minor traffic incident on June 22. According to press reports, Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador, had been arrested on three prior occasions, and convicted of two felonies, but was never turned over to federal immigration authorities “largely as a result of San Francisco’s self-imposed sanctuary status.” San Francisco law prohibits local officials from cooperating with federal officials in deporting illegal aliens.

As recently as March 2008, Ramos was arrested after police discovered a gun in his car that had been used in a double homicide. The district attorney’s office did not press charges and Ramos was released. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated that the agency was never notified of the arrest.

If all of this sounds tragically familiar, it should. You may recall the March 2 murder in Los Angeles of Jamiel Shaw Jr., the high school athlete gunned down (allegedly) by Pedro Espinoza, an illegal alien gang member.

Espinoza had been released from a Culver City, Calif., jail the day before the murder. Judicial Watch obtained Espinoza’s booking record. Culver City, by the way, is also a sanctuary city. Los Angeles is stonewalling our records request for its documents on Espinoza. We’ll probably have to sue to get at them.

The murders of Shaw and the three innocents in San Francisco are stark reminders of the devastating consequences of illegal alien sanctuary policies. Ramos should have been deported long ago.

Instead, San Francisco authorities put him back on the streets and now three people are dead.  We suspect the documents about Ramos’ earlier arrests will show that San Francisco’s sanctuary policy was in part responsible for these terrible crimes. 

Defenders of lawless “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that protect illegal alien gangbangers are now on the defensive in California. In the wake of the San Francisco triple homicide, Mayor Gavin Newsome, the arch-liberal who has designs on being governor, has ordered a review of his city’s sanctuary policies. And the family of Jamiel Shaw Jr. has led the charge to reform L.A.’s sanctuary policy. (Judicial Watch has mounted direct legal challenges as well.)

But local residents are under fire, too. Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County are two of many capital-area jurisdictions that have these same sanctuary policies. Sanctuary for illegal aliens must end — it is a matter of life and death.