San Francisco, Sanctuary City, Protecting Illegal Immigrant Drug Dealers From Arrest

Cross posted from Wake Up America.

YouTube video of news accounts about San Francisco's ad campaign inviting illegal immigrants to their city and offering them access to public services, found here and shown below.

Months ago it was reported that San Francisco which is a sanctuary city, created ads to invite illegal immigrants to their city and give them taxpayer funded services. They have also been protecting convicted juvenile offenders from arrest.

A sanctuary city is a city or town in the United States that offers protection to illegal immigrants and they do not allow funds or resources in their cities to be used to enforce immigration laws.

As seen in the video above, San Francisco not only protects illegal immigrants but created an expensive ad campaign to publicly invite illegal immigrants to the city and offer them taxpayer funded services.

Pat Dollard provides the whole San Francisco ad, inviting illegal immigrants to the city, at his site which should be seen because it is the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, that speaks in the ad offering safe haven to illegal immigrants and as the story progresses there will be direct quotes from him about recent events.

Taking it a step further, it has recently been reported that one of San Francisco's regular practices have been to use city funds- taxpayers money- to escort convicted juveniles back to their home countries to aid and abet the prevention of their arrest.

They have been providing this service for years.Until recently when federal immigration authorities in Houston detained a juvenile probation officer who was escorting two juvenile offenders back to Honduras.

In some cases the people being escorted back to their home countries, according to Joseph P. Russoniello, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, were not juveniles.

Russoniello tells Fox News, "They had stopped them and found out that they were — despite the fact that they had claimed they were juveniles — they were adults. In some cases, they were convicted felons; in other cases, they had actually entered the country after deportation, and so on."

That is when the U.S. Attorney's Office demanded an explanation from San Francisco officials and they were told on June 16, 2008, that the city was no longer going to deport the "underage" offenders.

Russoniello said that still did not "resolve the ultimate problem, which is why
wasn't juvenile probation reporting to ICE that they had in their custody people
who were illegal aliens?" He said he's still awaiting an answer from the city.

Since that incident became public almost two months ago, San Francisco then began to send these convicted juvenile offenders to group homes in San Bernardino County.

Another event has occurred that has caused an "uproar" and has the people of San Bernardino County outraged.

Eight convicted juvenile drug dealers from Honduras, simply walked away from one of those unsecured group homes, the Silverlake Youth Services.

This most recent event has sparked the anger of Gary Ovitt who is the San Bernardino County Supervisor, and he speaks out about San Francisco's practices by saying, "I was unaware that the city had its own foreign policy and immigration laws that superseded federal law. No one should have to suffer from a poorly thought-out policy such as this."

This brings us back to Mayor Gavin Newsom, referenced above, the man that spoke in the ad to invite illegal immigrants to the city of San Francisco and offers them protection.His response to the eight convicted drug dealers walking away from the unsecured group home was, "Those unfortunate escapes are unacceptable and are producing no intended results and creating unintended consequences, and so that practice has also stopped. We did this two days ago."

Newsom also claims that it is not the city's fault because he doesn't run the courts and the original deportations were ordered by the courts.

In an interview with the LA Times, Russoniello takes San Francisco to task by saying, "the phenomenon of Hondurans being trucked into the Bay Area, housed in Oakland and sent out to sell crack cocaine" has been ongoing for years and that the adults are claiming to be juvenile and are gaming the system.

He also asserts that San Francisco is not verifying the age of these felons.

Newsom insisted Tuesday that the practice of shielding young illegal
immigrant offenders from federal officials was not meant to protect
lawbreakers.

He said it stemmed in part from the sanctuary city ordinance, enacted in
1989, which requires that the city turn over to ICE adult illegal immigrants
with felony records or those who have been accused of felonies but is murkier on
the subject of juvenile offenders.

An ICE spokesman in Houston gets to the heart of the issue by saying that "although San Francisco is a sanctuary city, it's a problem whenever someone attempts to evade the law. ... Our law does not allow us to turn a blind eye to any individual who has come into this country illegally."

The chief of the Juvenile Probation Department for San Francisco, William Siffermann, disagrees with that and defends the city's policy to protect convicted offenders from deportation by saying that "It might prevent them from obtaining citizenship".

Russoniello doesn't believe that argument holds water and he states, "No matter whose immigration reform is adopted, nobody is going to have a line for people who are drug dealers to get the benefit of amnesty or citizenship. So you're wasting your time trying to protect them."

Fox News reports that Russoniello would neither confirm or deny whether there is or will be an investigation into the department's shielding of illegal immigrants.