Exploiting tragedies has always been smart politics for demagogues seeking to promote their political agenda. From Pearl Harbor to 9/11, cynical politicians have fanned the flames of racism, fear, and prejudice for cheap political gain, sometimes triggering overreactions (internment, blacklisting, disastrous wars) with enormous human, constitutional, and financial costs. It dishonors the dead to use them as a mere political prop.

That is exactly what certain politicians are doing with the memory of Kathryn Steinle, a young woman killed in San Francisco earlier this month by a man who happens to be undocumented.

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