LAURIE ROBERTS

Is Matt Salmon really a racist for trying to put some teeth into deportation laws?

Laurie Roberts
opinion columnist
Arraignment of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, accused murderer of 32 year old Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco

He is, to hear one immigration activist tell it, a hater with a "racist criminalization agenda." A congressman who is taking advantage of a tragedy to further "a hate for migrant communities."

A guy who is one step away from being Hitler, apparently.

"The bill is not about solutions," Francisca Porchas, organizing director for the Puente Human Rights Movement, wrote in an op-ed this week. "It is about stirring anti-immigrant hysteria and vilifying immigrants to justify mass incarceration."

Or maybe the bill, imperfect though it certainly is, is about trying to figure out a way to make it less likely that a convicted felon who's been deported five times will be on hand to shoot and kill a woman as she strolls the streets of San Francisco.

"I think most of the people that are here, even ones who are undocumented, would agree that they want to live on safe streets," the bill's sponsor, Rep. Matt Salmon, told me. "There's no reason that people that commit serious crimes are allowed to roam the streets and perpetuate the kind evil that was perpetuated against Grant (Ronnebeck) or against Kate."

Grant Ronnebeck, 21, was shot and killed in January over a pack of cigarettes while working at a Mesa QuikTrip. Police have arrested Apolinar Altamirano, who spent two years roaming the streets while awaiting a deportation hearing after a burglary conviction.

Kathryn Steinle, 32, was shot and killed earlier this month while walking along the Embarcadero with her father in San Francisco. Police have arrested Francisco Sanchez, a seven-time felon who had been deported five times – in Washington, in Arizona, in Texas and in California. And yet there he was earlier this month on the streets of San Francisco as Steinle and her father took a walk.

Thus comes Salmon with Grant's law, to require that a convicted felon who is here illegally remain in federal custody while awaiting deportation and to require that the deportation be done within 90 days of arrest. (The bill presumably would better fund the overwhelmed immigration courts, where the wait for a deportation hearing can be years.)

And Kate's law, to require that a person who has been deported but returns to the U.S. serve a mandatory five years in prison. Currently, illegal reentry after deportation is punishable by up to two years in prison on a first offense -- or up to 20 if the person has committed an "aggravated felony".

Commence the hysterics, complete with Nazi references.

Porchas correctly pointed out that Kate's law would catch up mothers who have been deported and reentered the country to be with their children. Then, she went off the rails, implying that the Steinle family is playing politics and branding Salmon's bill "hate legislation".

"Since her death, politicians of both parties have seized on the incident to tell a lie about our immigrant community and use the tragedy to advance a racist criminalization agenda," she wrote.

Clearly, not all … or even most … or even many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country are murderers or people who pose a danger.

And clearly, Salmon's bill needs work. But is he really a racist for trying to find a deterrent to keep people who are kicked out of the country from returning to the country? Is such a thing really unreasonable?

Salmon says he's open to amending his bill so that it applies only to convicted felons.

"What we are trying to do is make sure what happened in San Francisco doesn't happen again," he told me. "I don't think anybody realistically thinks that the lady that's trying to be reunited with her family is falling into that circumstance."

In a way, I don't blame Porchas for her suspicions. This, after all, is Arizona, the land of Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce and Senate Bill 1070, a place where people have been hunted. Literally.

But just as some Republicans are too quick to brand all undocumented immigrants as criminals (Donald Trump, are you listening?), some immigration activists are too quick to brand anybody who tries to do anything about illegal immigration a racist.

After awhile, both sides are easy to tune out.