Jose Ines Garcia Zarate (SFPD)
An undocumented immigrant from Mexico who Donald Trump trashed in an August 2016 campaign speech has been found not guilty of murder and manslaughter charges in the killing of Kathryn Steinle.
The man on trial, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was found guilty only of possession of a firearm by a felon.
The jury also found him not guilty of assault with a firearm.
The backlash to his release into the community crescendoed when Donald J. Trump invoked Ms. Steinle’s killing as he campaigned for president. Mr. Trump rallied national support for his hard-line immigration agenda, which ultimately helped to catapult him into office.
In a major speech on immigration in August 2016, Mr. Trump argued that “countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws.”
Mr. Trump then named several young people who he said had become victims of policies he considered failures. Among those he named was Ms. Steinle, who Mr. Trump said had been “gunned down in the sanctuary city of San Francisco, by an illegal immigrant, deported five previous times.”
“And they knew he was no good,” Mr. Trump said of the man who had shot her.
Except The Donald was wrong.
Again.
And again.
