There are few silver linings to the travesty of justice that took place on Thursday in a San Francisco courtroom, just as there are few bright spots left to talk about in our collective mainstream media. So it was with some chagrined surprise that we noticed the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial regarding the Kate Steinle verdict this week. The newspaper, which is dedicated to liberal bias in a way that makes the Washington Post look like the Gateway Pundit, did not let their Trump hatred blind them to the fact that Jose Ines Garcia Zarate’s acquittal was an outrageous departure from the rule of law and a frightening vision of their city’s future.
After noting that the judge in this case was correct in telling the jury to ignore the political firestorm that has erupted over sanctuary cities, the Chronicle’s editorial board said that while that debate had nothing to do with Garcia Zarate’s culpability in the murder, it also did not mean that San Francisco and California were headed in the right direction vis a vis illegal immigration.
“An inmate with Garcia Zarate’s record, a seven-time felon who repeatedly re-entered this country illegally, could be released on the streets today,” the editors write. “Supervisors need to ask themselves, not only whether this is in the interest of public safety — but the humanity of sending an immigrant who was otherwise headed for deportation into the streets of one of the nation’s most expensive cities to become homeless.”
This is about as conservative as it gets when you’re talking about San Francisco and The Chronicle, but it’s a demonstration of a phenomenon we’ve long anticipated. Liberal California or not, there’s only so much insanity Americans can take. And we’ve had a feeling for a long time that Democrats are putting their efforts in the wrong place. Yes, there are a lot of Americans – especially in blue states – who have sympathy for illegal immigrants. Plenty of people want to see millions of them get amnesty. That’s all fine and well, but there’s a huge difference between congressional efforts to reform our immigration laws and cities taking it upon themselves to completely ignore those laws. And no matter how much you may be a Trump-hating Democrat voter, you have to be asking yourself if THIS is really the hill you want your elected officials to die on.
As for Garcia Zarate, the Department of Justice is apparently looking at the possibility of filing federal charges against the immigrant relating to his repeated re-entry into the country. DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores told Fox News on Friday: “We’re looking at every option and we will prosecute this to the fullest extent of the law because these cases are tragic and entirely preventable.”
Entirely preventable. But that’s only true if we have a federal government, followed by states, cities, and, ultimately, citizens who are willing to enforce the law. We can only pray that this sad verdict is the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to liberal support for these lawless cities.
