Arrested

ICE turns Sanchez over to San Francisco authorities for an outstanding drug warrant. The agency requests an immigration detainer, but San Francisco — a city that doesn’t honor such request, believing them to violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures — releases him. San Francisco law says that

a law enforcement official shall not detain an individual on the basis of a civil immigration detainer after that individual becomes eligible for release from custody.

The chief legal counsel to the San Francisco County Sheriff says Francisco was let go because there was no legal cause to detain the suspect. The department would have returned Lopez-Sanchez if there had been a court order or warrant, but:

When Mr. Lopez-Sanchez was booked into the jail, there was no active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) warrant or judicial order of removal for him.

Charges are dropped the following day, but Sanchez is held until April 15 while the sheriff’s office determine if there are no other warrants for his arrest and he had completed his federal prison sentence.