SAN FRANCISCO — Long before he was arrested in the shooting death of a woman at one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist sites, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez was using the U.S.-Mexican border like a revolving door.
He was arrested while in the U.S. illegally and deported to his native Mexico five times from June 1994 to June 2009, only to slip back into the country within months, weeks, even days. He served roughly 15 years in federal prison in three stints for illegal re-entry, completing his most recent stretch this year.
But his habit of sneaking across the border over and over again is not all that uncommon. And probably no one outside law enforcement would have paid much attention to Sanchez if not for what happened after he finished his latest stint behind bars.
Last week, he was arrested and accused of killing 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle as she strolled on a popular San Francisco pier with her father. It turned out that Sanchez, 45, was out on the streets because of San Francisco’s “sanctuary” policy of minimal cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The slaying has brought heavy criticism down on the city from politicians of both parties and has become the latest flash point in the debate over how to deal with illegal immigration.
In a tragic twist in the case, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday that a gun belonging to one of its rangers was used in the killing. Officials said the service weapon had been stolen from the ranger’s car in a break-in.
In 2013, a total of 18,498 people were sentenced for the federal crime of felony re-entry of the U.S. The offenders had been deported an average of 3.2 times each. The average sentence was 18 months, officials say.
