Free Republic

Business owners in San Francisco's Mission District, cleaning up after a night in which protesters damaged more than 30 stores and restaurants and vandalized cars, questioned Tuesday why activists had singled them out and why police hadn't done more to halt the rampage. Among those dealing with the damage were officers at the neighborhood police station, where black-clad, masked activists threw paint and bashed the front door Monday night. Even as they defended themselves from criticism that they had allowed the vandals to run wild - one restaurant owner said officers even appeared to be "escorting" the group - high-level...

In the latest showdown with the federal government — albeit a more symbolic one — the Board of Supervisors today approved a nonbinding resolution that asks the Sheriff’s Department and Juvenile Probation Department to not spend any local money when detaining suspected undocumented immigrants at the request of U.S. immigration authorities. The resolution, backed by immigrant rights advocates, provides political backing for the two departments if they choose to ignore requests from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to hold people in custody ”unless there is prior written agreement with the federal government by which all costs incurred by...

It wasn’t the first time her partner hit her, but in October 2010 Norma finally picked up the phone and dialed 911. Instead of getting the help she longed for, the undocumented San Francisco resident was taken into custody and detained under the federal government’s Secure Communities Program. . . . more than 30 San Francisco residents who came out to speak on behalf of a resolution initiated by District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar. It would discourage the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and Juvenile Probation Department from using local funds to respond to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.

I ran into a man I'd known for years at a supermarket the other day. He's an old San Francisco guy, so I was surprised at what he said. "I'm moving out of the city," he said. "San Francisco is not the city I grew up in anymore. I'm through with it. "Yep," he said, "I'm gonna sell my house and move to Novato. You know what? The sun shines there in the summer. I mean they have sun - that big yellow thing - sun in July and August. I'm tired of the fog - fog every night and...

I was duped. I once hired an illegal immigrant to be a reporter for the Chronicle. "I don't think I'm a criminal," Jose Antonio Vargas told me when we met last week, right before he announced his status to the world. "Don't make me seem guiltier than I am." Jose lied to me and everyone else he worked for, and that's not kosher, especially in a profession where facts and, more elusively, the truth are considered valuable commodities. In 2003 he wrote a story for us about illegals getting fake drivers' licenses in the Mission when he'd used phony documents...

San Francisco no longer will report to immigration authorities juveniles suspected of being in the United States illegally when they are arrested on a felony charge if they can show they have family ties to the Bay Area, are enrolled in school and are not repeat offenders, Mayor Ed Lee said Tuesday. The edict creates a middle ground between the hard-line position of Lee's predecessor, Gavin Newsom, who directed city law enforcement officers to report all arrested juveniles to federal authorities for possible deportation, and the Board of Supervisors, which backed a more liberal policy. Supervisors passed a law in...

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey explained in The Chronicle's Sunday Insight section his opposition to Secure Communities, the federal program that automatically passes new arrestees' fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The program applies to "everyone booked into a county jail," Hennessey complained - "even in a minor matter, such as having no driver's license in one's possession in a traffic stop." To Hennessey and many other "sanctuary city" supporters, a person can break federal immigration law, then violate state driver's license law, but still should escape the legal consequences. Secure Communities is supposed to address illegal immigration by targeting...

San Francisco cannot be held responsible for the deaths of a father and two sons allegedly gunned down in 2008 by a man city officials refused to report to immigration authorities, the state Court of Appeals decided Monday. The ruling upholds a February 2010 Superior Court decision. Tony Bologna, 48, and his two sons, Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot to death in a car near their Excelsior district home in June 2008. A third son in the car was not injured. Relatives sued the city, claiming San Francisco's sanctuary policy protecting illegal immigrants kept the alleged gunman, Edwin...

Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado is running a radio ad criticizing Democratic rival Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's mayor, for a city policy to try to rehabilitate and release undocumented minors being held for crimes – without reporting them to federal officials for possible deportation. Following is an analysis by Susan Ferriss of The Bee Capitol Bureau: Text Narrator: It took a triple murder for Mayor Gavin Newsom to admit San Francisco's sanctuary city policies were a misguided and costly mistake. Second narrator: For four years while Newsom was mayor, San Francisco refused to turn dangerous illegal immigrant criminals over to authorities...

Since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office, he and the city of San Francisco have spent more than $1 billion on the homeless. But is it helping? This year, the city spent $150 million on health care and social services for its estimated 13,500 homeless on the street or in city-funded housing. That comes to about $11,000 per person. The city has spent another $176 million, mostly in federal funds, on permanent housing for the homeless since 2004. Newsom said at a recent Chronicle editorial board meeting that since implementing his Care Not Cash program, the city has taken 12,000 people...

San Francisco police Officer Gary Buckner was assigned to patrol the streets looking for quality of life crimes - like people drinking or urinating on the street or aggressive panhandling - in 2008 and 2009. But after he cited one persistent panhandler 35 times for pestering drivers at a traffic light on South Van Ness, Buckner reached a discouraging conclusion. "There is no consequence whatsoever for their actions," Buckner said. "I've written hundreds and hundreds of citations, and I think I was called to court (to testify) twice."

The driver of an SUV that jumped a sidewalk and plowed into five people waiting for a bus Tuesday in San Francisco's Visitacion Valley did not have a license, police said. Two of the victims in the 9:36 a.m. crash at San Bruno and Arleta avenues were in critical condition late Tuesday, and the other three were in serious condition. The victims, four women and a man, ranged in age from their 30s to 80s, said Rachael Kagan, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital. The driver of a Ford Explorer, a 24-year-old woman whose name has not been released,...

Even as a federal judge blocked some of the more controversial portions of a new Arizona immigration law this week, its political reverberations - and those of other immigration issues - are shaking California's statewide races. Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is using the example of the Arizona policy to argue against places like San Francisco that have declared themselves to be sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.Under its 1989 policy, San Francisco law officers report felony suspects to federal immigration officials only if their legal status can't be readily confirmed. But Fiorina said that if the U.S. Department of Justice...

The Obama administration had gone to federal court to kill Arizona's new illegal-immigration law, scheduled to go into effect Thursday. The Department of Justice argues that enforcement of the Arizona law "is pre-empted by federal law and therefore violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution." Does this mean that if Team Obama prevails over Arizona, San Francisco and other sanctuary cities should prepare to go to court against the feds? After all, the Obama brief argues that "a state may not establish its own immigration policy or enforce state laws in a manner that interferes with the federal...

Barbara Boxer was on CNN where she discussed Arizona, her hair and her high unfavorable ratings. "Why do you think more than half of California voters just don't like you?" reporter Jessica Yellin asked. Boxer replied that she "the three Republican candidates" running for Senate beating up on me" -- plus two Republicans running for governor. So after 18 years in office, people don't like her because a handful of Republicans, most of whom lost their primary, have said negative things about her? Say this for Boxer, she is a pro at styling herself as an underdog.

San Francisco is a colorful city. Sometimes it's a little too colorful. While living here, I've seen so many disturbing images that have now permanently burnt themselves into my retinas. . . . I surveyed some friends to find out what was the most disgusting thing they've seen while living in San Francisco. Something purely horrific whose image will always stick with them in the same manner as the fall of the Twin Towers or the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan.

San Francisco bashing is about to intensify. Three Democratic politicians with strong ties to San Francisco - Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris - are engaged in tough statewide election battles and political experts say the GOP will probably seize on the city's reputation as a bastion of left-wing politics to attack them.Gubernatorial candidate Brown was born in San Francisco, served as Oakland's mayor and lives in the East Bay city while serving as the state attorney general; Newsom, vying for lieutenant governor, was born in San Francisco and is the city's mayor; and Attorney General candidate Harris was...

San Francisco officials are about to lose the ability to decide which criminal suspects who may also be undocumented immigrants should be reported to federal officials, The Chronicle has learned. Starting next month, the San Francisco County Jail must begin participating in an automated reporting system set up by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The program, Secure Communities, automatically links the fingerprint databases of state justice departments with a database used by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, known as ICE. As part of San Francisco's 1989 sanctuary city policy, officials only report felony suspects whose legal status...

San Francisco politicians went right to their favorite toolbox in reaction to Arizona's offensive and constitutionally suspect law to turn its police into immigration enforcers. "Boycott Arizona!" was the thoroughly predictable City Hall reaction. It's unlikely that lawmakers and businesses in the Grand Canyon State are going to be quaking in their boots at the prospect of lost business from indignant San Francisco liberals. And this boycott might end before it begins once the federal courts assess the constitutionality of singling out people for extra scrutiny on the basis of their appearance or language skills. It's hard to get too...

Oh, what a difference a day makes. On Monday, Mayor Gavin Newsom was questioning the wisdom of City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Supervisor David Campos' proposed boycott of Arizona for its harsh new immigration law, saying the law was "un-American" but boycotting a state and its businesses was "an extraordinarily complicated matter." "I appreciate the desire to condemn the act," Newsom said then. "I understand how (a boycott) would get a lot of attention, but I also think we have a lot of work to do to have a sober dialogue about, 'Is this something possible?' " He was saying...