San Francisco Defendant's Immigration History is Common

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 days, weeks or months. He served roughly 15 years in federal prison in three stints for illegal re-entry, completing his most recent stretch earlier 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 even 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.