Last July 1, 31-year old Katie Steinle was shot to death by an illegal alien named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez using a firearm that had been lost by a federal law enforcement officer. He wasn’t just any illegal alien. He had been deported five times and had seven felony convictions.

As I said at the time, Barack Obama didn’t pull the trigger but he was every bit as personally responsible for Ms. Steinle’s murder as the man who shot her. It was his egregious failure to enforce the laws of the United States that directly and foreseeably led to that murder. Just as Obama was willing to accept the murders of several hundred Mexican citizens and at least one US Border Patrol agent in order to increase the level of gun crime on the US-Mexico border, so too was he willing to kill random Americans to enforce his view on immigration policy.

Arguably, the outrage over that murder led to the rise of Donald Trump despite his own history of liberally funding liberal politicians who supported the “sanctuary city” movement, of which San Francisco is a charter member.

Now the family of Steinle is suing just about everyone who had anything to do with her death:

On Friday, her family filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, San Francisco County’s former sheriff, the federal Bureau of Land Management and the man who allegedly fired the deadly shot.

“Kate’s death was both foreseeable and preventable had the law enforcement agencies, officials and/or officers involved simply followed the laws, regulations and/or procedures which they swore to uphold,” the lawsuit said.
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The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, names the city and county of San Francisco, former county Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and the United States “for their failures to perform mandatory duties and/or for the unconstitutional and/or negligent acts and/or omissions of their officers, officials, agents and/or employees.”

It also names Lopez-Sanchez, a seven-time felon who had recently been released from county custody and was in possession of a stolen .40-caliber government-issued firearm, said the lawsuit, which alleges wrongful death, negligence and civil rights violations.

“Kate’s fate was sealed when a U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management Ranger failed to properly secure and/or store a government-issued firearm while it was left in an unoccupied vehicle in a high auto-theft neighborhood,” the lawsuit said.

Who knows what will come out of this. I suspect that business will continue as usual until we get an administration that is actually serious about enforcing immigration laws. Were I to guess I’d say that the US government and San Francisco’s insurance carrier will pay a lot of money to make this go away unless the Steinle family has very deep pockets to fund a legal crusade to make the US government and San Francisco change policies.