On Monday Oct. 19, a viral video showed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arresting a man in the South of Market area. San Francisco leaders immediately rallied to defend Milton Ramos-Rodriguez, 51, a twice deported citizen of El Salvador and alleged affiliate of the Sureños gang convicted of killing a person in a 1992 Mission District drive-by shooting with two open domestic violence cases. As I discovered after a deeper investigation, Ramos-Rodriguez has a notorious criminal history that goes back to his teen years — including two occasions where he spent years on the run as a wanted felon.
The day after the arrest, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder rallied with fellow supervisors and immigrant rights advocates on the steps of San Francisco City Hall alongside members of the Democratic Socialists of America and La Raza Centro Legal, where Fielder’s predecessor Hilary Ronen serves as executive director. Fielder shouted that Ramos-Rodriguez was kidnapped by ICE and called for the federal agency’s abolition. “We are here today because a demagogue in the White House is deploying ICE agents to terrorize and intimidate vulnerable communities ahead of an election,” she told the crowd. A member of the DSA also spoke, making District 2 supervisor Stephen Sherrill and District 3 supervisor Danny Sauter appear uncomfortable.
Ramos went on the lam again as a fugitive in 2005 after he violated probation in connection with the manslaughter conviction. … He was captured in 2012, at the age of 37.
After the rally, Mayor Daniel Lurie made his monthly appearance before the Board of Supervisors. He changed the beginning of his speech to address the arrest and indicated how upset he was about it. “We continue to see disturbing scenes of federal immigration enforcement,” he said. He also announced he would be adding an additional $1.8 million to the already $3 million in emergency funding for immigration defense. Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman waived the 30-day waiting period for the legislation, meaning supervisors can vote on it within weeks.
Ramos-Rodriguez, who remains in ICE custody, is represented by a federal public defender with legal assistance from Francisco Ugarte, Deputy Public Defender for the Immigration Unit of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. Ugarte also happens to be the husband of former District 9 supervisor Hilary Ronen, who once a had a gang member working in her office.
That gang member, Fernando Madrigal, was later sentenced to life in prison for murdering two people, including a teenager in Ronen’s district. As I stated above, Ronen is executive director of La Raza Centro Legal, which joined forces with Fielder to obtain the additional $1.8 million to help her husband’s employer defend Ramos-Rodriguez and other illegal immigrants, including drug dealers peddling fentanyl that kills hundreds of people in San Francisco per year.
So, who is Milton Rodriguez-Ramos?
According to court records, he faces two open domestic violence cases. In the first case he is charged with inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, cohabitant, dating partner, or co-parent; assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm; and criminal threats. In the second case, he’s charged with violating a domestic violence stay-away order. Ramos-Rodriguez was also charged in 2023 with false imprisonment and possession of a firearm and was sentenced the following year. He is on probation and wore an ankle monitor as recently as a month ago.
Twice deported and charged with one count of reentering the country illegally, a judge rejected Ramos-Rodriguez’s request for asylum in March 2013. The case was sent back for a second hearing, where the same judge found him “not credible.” According to federal documents, Ramos-Rodriguez claimed after his 2004 deportation that Salvadoran soldiers stripped him at the airport and, upon “spotting his gang tattoos and a tattoo of Che Guevara,” told him that he was a traitor and would be dead in 15 days.
He testified under oath that he escaped in a taxi that was “sprayed with machine gun fire” as it drove him to the border of Guatemala, where he illegally reentered the United States. He also told an asylum officer that MS-13 gang members tried to kidnap him and shot at him. Upon court questioning, he conceded it wasn’t true.
After additional requests to the Board of Immigration Appeals and a bid to reopen the case failed, the Ninth Circuit denied his petition. In 2017, Ramos-Rodriguez received a final order of deportation.
A notorious escape and years on the lam (twice)
In August 1993, Milton Ramos-Rodriguez (who then went by Milton Ramos) was one of 11 violent offenders who escaped from San Francisco Juvenile Hall. The case made headlines, with then mayor Frank Jordan blasting management of the facility and demanding an explanation of how 11 teenagers, five of them awaiting hearings on murder charges, escaped the maximum-security wing of the center after one was able to obtain a key and unlock the door.
Ramos, the last suspect at large, had been in custody in connection with a 1992 gang-related drive-by shooting in the Mission District where one person was killed. In 1997, a task force of FBI agents and San Francisco police tracked down and arrested the now 22-year-old Ramos hiding in a Monterey County cauliflower field. He had been living in Greenfield under the name Jorge Yanez Dominguez. Once back in San Francisco, Ramos was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the drive-by killing.
Ramos went on the lam again as a fugitive in 2005 after he violated probation in connection with the manslaughter conviction. He was also wanted for stabbing a former girlfriend in 2007 (she survived her injuries). He was captured nearly eight years later in 2012, at the age of 37, after an eight-hour standoff outside a home near a middle school in San Leandro.
United States Marshals surrounded the home at 7:30 a.m. and requested the San Leandro police SWAT team and hostage negotiators, who arrived about 11:30 a.m. Negotiators convinced Ramos’s then girlfriend to leave the house at 1:30 p.m. and Ramos surrendered about 90 minutes later. Washington Manor Middle School, about a block from the standoff, was not locked down; authorities told school district officials they had two lines of defense between the fugitive and the school.
Last week, with Ramos-Rodriguez’s long, violent record and final deportation order in mind, I reached out to the mayor’s office and every supervisor’s office to ask about their stance on funding the defense of convicted violent felons like him, and whether they supported deporting them. Only two supervisors — Matt Dorsey and Stephen Sherrill — responded.
The mayor’s press office shielded Lurie by answering for him in the vaguest of terms. When I asked Press Secretary and Senior Communications Advisor Charles Lutvak to have the mayor answer directly — even simplifying my already straightforward questions — he stopped responding.
It’s shocking how quickly San Francisco leaders stand up for a dramatic episode of virtue-signal theater but won’t back their rhetoric in writing.
More on that in my next column.
