Our local sanctuary city drama continues as Mayor Newsom went ahead yesterday with his threat to veto legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors amending a local ordinance that governs when city employees can report young illegal immigrant hooligans to the Feds. Currently, the city's ordinance requires city employees to report illegals to the Feds upon arrest. New Supervisor David Campos, the author of the vetoed legislation and reportedly a former illegal himself, hoped to change all that by not allowing anyone to report the accused until he or she was actually convicted of a crime.
In vetoing the ordinance, Newsom reportedly had this to say:
"The sanctuary ordinance as originally conceived and adopted was designed to protect those residents of our city who are law-abiding. It was never meant to serve as a shield for people accused of committing serious crimes."
Ah. So let's get this straight - any illegal who has been arrested is automatically considered not to be law-abiding and is therefore a criminal worthy of immediate removal from the country? Ain't that putting the cart before the horse there, Gavin? What about that messy thing called due process? You know, the whole not being deprived of life, liberty or property without notice, a hearing, and an impartial judge that sort of forms one of the very basic tenets of like 1,000 years of Anglo-American legal tradition? Is this the kind of legal reasoning we can expect from a Newsom administration in Sacramento? If so, someone should put Jello Biafra on notice. He might have another song to write.