Shalini Thakur's Mother Is Moving Back to India Because It's Safer. House Republicans Want Blue Cities to Answer for That.
Sudesh Kumari is going home to India. After what happened to her only child in California, she says India is the safer place to live.
"She could have been saved," Kumari said of her daughter, Shalini Thakur. "She told police so many times. She called them, but nobody did anything."
Shalini was all Kumari had left. Her husband, Shalini's father, died two years ago.
For months, Thakur, 38, had been stalked by a man who delivered for DoorDash. She found an Apple AirTag hidden under the hood of her car. He let the air out of her tires, followed her to work, made a copy of her apartment key and threatened to shoot anyone she spent time with. She got a restraining order in May, and he ignored it.
In September, outside a Panera Bread in Sacramento County, he caught her in the parking lot. She ran. According to the Department of Homeland Security, he chased her down and shot her in the head. Hours later, cornered by police on Highway 50, he turned the gun on himself.
His name was Rohit Rohit, a 22-year-old from India who crossed the border illegally in Arizona in August 2023. Border Patrol caught him and let him go under Joe Biden's catch-and-release policy, with nothing more than a court date. He ended up in California, where state law bars local police from asking about immigration status and sharply limits when they can hand anyone over to ICE. How a man in the country illegally got approved to deliver food to Americans' doors is a question DoorDash hasn't answered.
"This tragedy would have been completely avoided if it weren't for the Biden administration releasing this killer," DHS said. "Sanctuary politicians must put an end to reckless policies that play Russian roulette with American lives."
House Republicans are going after those sanctuary politicians where they'll feel it.
The Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act, H.R. 7640, written by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., cleared the House Judiciary Committee 22-11 in March, and Republican leaders plan to bring it to the House floor during the lame-duck session after the midterms.
For the first time, victims would be able to take sanctuary jurisdictions to court. If a city or state turns down a federal immigration detainer and releases a criminal illegal alien who goes on to hurt someone, the victim or the victim's family could sue that city or state in federal court for damages. "It allows people who've been harmed, where local political leaders tell the local law enforcement they can't work with federal law enforcement, detainers aren't honored … to go take that city, take that state to court," said Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
The bill also hits sanctuary jurisdictions in the budget, moving federal law enforcement grants to communities that cooperate with ICE. It also strips away some of the legal immunity sanctuary officials have hidden behind and protects local deputies who want to work with federal agents.
Those deputies need the protection. "All of the local sheriffs in my district want desperately to cooperate with ICE to enforce our immigration laws," McClintock said. California won't let them. The state's sanctuary law, the so-called California Values Act, was passed by a Democratic legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017. Gov. Gavin Newsom has defended it at every turn.
The sanctuary experiment is a Democratic creation, and the numbers show what it costs. In 2025, ICE asked local jails to hold 201,340 criminal illegal aliens for pickup, and 17,864 of those requests were refused. New York alone turned away 16,070 detainers between January 2025 and early October 2026. Each refusal meant a criminal walked out of a jail that federal agents had asked to hold him.
"Democrat-run sanctuary jurisdictions protect criminal illegal aliens and threaten public safety," Jordan said.
For years, the Democratic officials running those jurisdictions have paid nothing when their policies go wrong. When a released criminal kills someone, there's a press conference, a statement about tragedy and a speech blaming Washington. Defying ICE wins them applause from activists. The bill would bring the cost home in two places they can't ignore: a federal courtroom and their law enforcement budget.
The choice for blue cities would be simple. They can work with ICE and keep dangerous criminals off their streets, or they can keep the sanctuary policies and explain to their own taxpayers why the city is writing checks to the families of the people those policies got killed.
Shalini Thakur called the police again and again. Her mother is leaving the country. The House is expected to vote on the bill after Election Day.