NOT EVEN.

It wasn’t $450 — it was actually just $20. At a press conference, San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi wondered why the feds acted on this warrant 20 years after it was issued, after having had Lopez-Sanchez so many times in the past. But they did.

So, once they called San Francisco’s jailkeepers, it was protocol to pick him up (even though prosecutors dismissed the charges soon after.) That’s when things started to get controversial: Now he was sitting in SF’s county jail, which meant he fell under the city’s sanctuary city policy — an approach which began in the 80's as Central Americans escaping bloody civil wars moved into the city, and meant San Francisco would not spend city money to enforce federal immigration laws.

In 2013, the city decided not to hold inmates for immigration authorities to pick up, unless they were guilty of violent felonies. Mirkarimi started a policy earlier this year, in which no inmate would never be handed over to immigration without a warrant or a judicial order. Although Mirkarimi has a reputation for not cooperating with immigration, he actually held Lopez-Sanchez in jail an extra two-and-a-half weeks after the charges were dropped. He says that was to make sure Lopez-Sanchez wasn’t wanted for any further federal time. A reporter asked Mirkarimi about this inconsistency: “What legal basis did you have for holding anyone for two-and-a-half weeks without charges? Aren’t you violating his rights?”

What did the sheriff reply?