- Saul Chavez, a Mexican national charged in Cook County, Illinois, with vehicular homicide resulting in the death of William Dennis McCann, 66. Despite a detainer lodged by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in November 2011 following his arrest, Chavez was released from Cook County custody. Chavez, who entered the country without inspection at an unknown place and unknown time, is wanted by ICE as an illegal alien in addition to being a criminal fugitive.
A Chicago family hurt by sanctuary city politics
BY JOHN KASS
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
You could say the testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on violence committed by immigrants here illegally was heartbreaking.
But the killings are made all the worse by federal immigration law that is ignored so Democratic Party pols can hustle Latino votes through so-called sanctuary city policies.
I could pretty that up some, but that’s what it is. It isn’t death by politics, exactly. But politics has blood on its hands.
“There was a lot of emotion in there,” Brian McCann, brother of a Chicago victim, told me over the phone after his testimony on Tuesday.
“It’s been a few years for me. But others are just going through it,” he said. “It’s rough. Sitting there next to them, well, it was rough.”
The wife of a police officer whose husband was killed gave testimony. So did a mom whose son was killed and set on fire. The uncle of a young man shot to death for cigarettes told his story. And the father of Katie Steinle had his say.
It is Katie’s killing that has reignited the debate over immigration and the sanctuary city movement.
She was allegedly shot to death by Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, here illegally, a seven-time felon who’d been deported to Mexico five times before. He’d been in the custody of the San Francisco sheriff on a marijuana charge. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials wanted him held. But San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and the local sheriff ignored those requests and released him in April. Now the sheriff is blaming the feds.
“The day she was killed, we were walking arm in arm,” Jim Steinle said about his daughter Katie. “She said, ‘Help me dad.’ Those are the last words I will ever hear from my daughter.”
When I heard that Brian McCann was going to testify, I turned on the computer to cspan.org to watch it live.
Some of you may remember a few columns I wrote back in 2012, about Brian’s younger brother, William “Dennis” McCann.
On June 8, 2011, William McCann was walking across Kedzie Avenue in the Logan Square neighborhood when he was struck by a black Dodge Neon driven by an alleged drunken driver.
A witness, Alberto Aceves, told the Tribune he heard the impact, then saw William McCann land on the windshield. The driver stepped on the gas, McCann hit the ground and the underbelly of the car caught him and dragged him north on Kedzie. Aceves recalled screaming, “Stop! The guy’s under your car!” MORE
“Stop! The Guy’s under your car!”
John Kass wrote these columns about the death of
William “Dennis” McCann in 2012.
Cook County’s Saul Chavez moment
Chicago politics didn’t kill William “Dennis” McCann. What killed the 66-year-old man was that black Dodge Neon driven by an alleged drunken driver as McCann walked across Kedzie Avenue last summer.
How to fix the mistake of the Chavez 11, aka Cook County commissioners who weakened jail-release law
It wasn’t as if the politicians of the Cook County Board weren’t warned that they were creating a Willie Horton problem.
Now FBI’s looking for man let go from County Jail
The embarrassment never ceases for the Cook County Board of Commissioners’ famed “Chavez 11” and their poster boy, Saul Chavez.
