The trial for the illegal immigrant who shot and killed Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier in 2015 begins this week. It brings the case to a close but leaves the immigration debate far from settled and the law passed in her name stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate claims that Steinle’s death was an accident. He said he found a handgun wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on the pier and that it fired as he tried to extract it, shooting the 32-year-old Steinle in the back while she was walking with her father.

The handgun originally belonged to a Bureau of Land Management ranger who had reported it stolen a week before the shooting. Zarate has been charged with second-degree murder and will face a maximum sentence of 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

Now 54, Zarate had been deported five times previously. On the campaign trail, President Trump criticized the state of California’s weak immigration policy for failing to keep Steinle’s killer out of the country. President Trump strongly supported the passage of Kate’s Law, which would increase penalties for those who attempt to reenter the country after deportation.

The House of Representatives passed Kate’s Law in June with bipartisan support, but the Senate has yet to act upon it.

The Senate will need to meet a 60-vote threshold to pass the bill, meaning eight Democratic senators will need to cross the aisle to move the bill past a filibuster for a full vote on the Senate floor.

But there is no indication when the Republican majority in the Senate will decide it’s time to try to get Kate’s Law to the president’s desk. Having failed to repeal Obamacare several times, the top Republican priority is the passage of a budget that will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit in order to set the stage for tax reform to pass under budget reconciliation.

Kate’s Law seems to have fallen out of the national policy discussion. In early October, the Trump administration released a list of immigration priorities the Democrats must agree to in exchange for DACA amnesty. While there was general support for increased border security in the president’s ask, there was no specific mention of Kate’s Law.

This is disappointing — Kate’s Law was a “day one” promise of Trump. The trial of Steinle’s killer presents the president with an opportunity to ensure the Senate gets to work on fulfilling the president’s campaign promise. (For more from the author of “Kate Steinle’s Killer Goes on Trial as Kate’s Law Goes Nowhere” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

A new report indicates that illegal immigration is costing American taxpayers roughly $135 billion annually, the highest number ever recorded.

“The Fiscal Burden Of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers,” published by the Federation For American Immigration Reform, found that illegal immigrants cost state and local governments more than $88 billion, with illegals costing the federal government over $45 billion annually.

FAIR’s analysis, which was provided in advance to the Washington Examiner, found that claims suggesting illegal immigrants pay significant amounts of money in taxes back to federal, state and local governments isn’t entirely accurate.

The report said illegal immigrants only pay $19 billion total in taxes, leaving the additional $116 billion to be picked up by the American taxpayer. This mean the U.S. only recovers roughly 14 percent of the total amount spent each year on illegal immigrants.

“Clearly, the cost of doing nothing to stop illegal immigration is far too high,” said FAIR Executive Director Dan Stein. “President Trump has laid out a comprehensive strategy to regain control of illegal immigration and bring down these costs.”

Stein said that in order to curb the historic rise in illegal immigrants coming to the U.S., more aggressive measures have to be put in place.

“Building the wall, enhancing interior enforcement and mandating national E-Verify will go a long way in bringing these ridiculously high costs under control,” Stein said.

At the federal level, illegal immigration costs $17.14 billion a year in medical costs alone, with $13.15 billion being spent on law enforcement and $8 billion going toward general government services.

At the state and local level, illegal immigration costs roughly $44.4 billion in education costs, with general services available to the public costing $18.5 billion, and $12.1 billion spent on medical services.

The cost for an individual illegal child soars even higher after factoring in welfare, health care, and school lunches.

California spends roughly $23 billion a year overall on illegal immigrants, which is the highest among all states. Texas spends almost $11 billion and New York spends $7.4 billion.

“If the same jobs held by illegal aliens were filled by legal workers, at the prevailing market wage, it may safely be presumed that federal, state and local governments would receive higher tax payments,” FAIR said.

FAIR estimates that there are roughly 12.5 million illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S. (For more from the author of “Illegal Aliens Cost US Over $100 Billion Annually” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Since news broke of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the DACA amnesty for roughly 800,000 illegal immigrants, a sympathetic media has trotted out endless sob stories about so-called “Dreamers.”

The news coverage and criticism of Trump’s reported decision to end DACA has focused on the idea that they are children (many thousands are in their 30s) and are super-stars in their community in an attempt to justify blanket amnesty. To support their criticism, we’re offered an endless stream of anecdotal success stories.

CNN’s Poppy Harlow dragged a violin-playing, six-language speaking Ivy League student in front of the camera. And yes, a DACA recipient was working as a paramedic in the Houston-area following the destruction by Hurricane Harvey. These reports and the reporters who are anxiously highlighting them usually fail to mention 2,139 DACA recipients have lost their status since 2012 due to criminal activity.

“Most DACA terminations were based on the following infractions (not ranked): alien smuggling, assaultive offenses, domestic violence, drug offenses, DUI, larceny and thefts, criminal trespass and burglary, sexual offenses with minors, other sex offenses and weapons offenses,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told The Daily Caller. (Read more from “Sympathetic Media Scrambles to Trot out Shiny ‘Dreamers,’ but Forgets All the Nightmares” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.