The man arrested on suspicion of murder in the shooting death of Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s Pier 14 Wednesday has a rap sheet with seven felonies, was deported five times, and in March was released from San Francisco Jail, despite immigration authorities asking that he be kept in custody, officials said Friday.

But 45-year-old Francisco Sanchez’s release was in line with San Francisco Sheriff’s Department policies, which say the department will not comply with requested immigration holds based solely on allegations a person is in the country illegally.

“He should have never been out, and now our daughter is gone forever,” Steinle’s mother, Liz Sullivan, said Friday, but she stopped short of blaming public officials for her daughter’s death.

“It’s a terrible travesty, and we lost our daughter,” she said. “Everybody is trying to put the political spin on it, but it happened, and there’s no taking it back.”

Sanchez was arrested Wednesday night after police said he shot and killed the 32-year-old woman at Pier 14 along the crowded Embarcadero, a destination popular with tourists and families for its sweeping views of the bay and the Ferry Building.

The suspect later told police that he was shooting at sea lions, but hit Steinle, a source familiar with the investigation told The Chronicle.

Sanchez was taken into custody about a mile south of the scene. Steinle died a few hours later at San Francisco General Hospital.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had turned Sanchez over to San Francisco police on March 26 for an outstanding drug warrant and requested that they be notified before his release, so federal officers could take him back into custody and deport him.

In federal prison

Before that, Sanchez was serving time in federal prison on felony charges of re-entering the country after deportation.

But when the San Francisco district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Sanchez for what authorities said was a decade-old marijuana possession case, sheriff’s deputies released him without notifying immigration authorities, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the federal agency.

The case reignites debate over whether local jurisdictions should hold inmates who are in the country illegally but would otherwise be eligible for release.

Opponents say holding inmates based on their immigration status creates hostility between immigrant communities and law enforcement, while others argue that Sanchez’s case illustrates why agencies should revisit policies on releasing certain undocumented inmates — especially those with criminal histories.

S.F. no-holds policy

In May 2014, San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi announced his “no-holds ICE policy,” saying the department would no longer honor immigration detention requests “unless they are supported by judicial determination of probable cause or with a warrant of arrest.”

“We followed both the city ordinance and our policy, which is that we don’t honor ICE detainers — which are a request, not a legal basis,” Freya Horne, an attorney at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, said Friday.

Horne said Sanchez was brought to court March 27, where his drug charge was dropped. He was held until April 15, when deputies released him after checking with federal authorities to make sure there was no legal basis to hold him, Horne said.

State law

That policy is a broader version of legislation passed first in San Francisco and then statewide in 2013.

In October of that year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB4, a bill by then-Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, barring state and local law enforcement agencies from detaining undocumented residents based on their immigration status.

A year earlier, however, the governor had vetoed a version of the bill that didn’t allow police the discretion to hold for deportation people with a record of serious crimes. Authorities in San Francisco were not legally obligated to release Sanchez based on the state law.

Four of Sanchez’s seven prior felonies were drug related, including his March arrest, which stemmed from a 10-year-old San Francisco warrant for marijuana possession that immigration officials wanted to clear from the books before deporting him, authorities said. The other convictions included probation violation and felony re-entry after deportation.

“This individual was a public safety risk and exemplifies the kind of individual that ICE wants to identify and process for removal,” said the agency’s former director, Julie Myers Wood, who now runs a private investigation and security firm.

Divisive issue

Wood acknowledged that the immigration hold issue is contentious because of the communities that can be affected, but said “public safety consequences are too important for ICE and state and local law enforcement not to work together on these very serious cases.”

But Horne said ICE “could certainly have done something” with regard to Sanchez’s case.

“ICE did not do what they should do,” she said. “They could issue a warrant or get a judicial review if they are intent on keeping a person in custody.”

Other jurisdictions around the state announced similar policies to San Francisco’s, including San Mateo County, which modified its policy to not honor holds of inmates except in cases where individuals “pose significant public safety concerns, which would require case by case approval.”

Asked about Sanchez’s release Friday, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said “any questions on handling the case should be referred to the Sheriff’s Department, because they’re responsible for processing inmates.”

Steinle, a Pleasanton native who lived in San Francisco, was walking with her father and a family friend at about 6:30 p.m. when she was shot.

Gun in the bay

The killing appeared to be a random shooting, police said.

Sanchez told police he tossed the gun into the bay after seeing Steinle was hit, according to the source.

Police dive teams scoured the waters beneath the pier throughout the day Thursday and recovered a gun believed to be the weapon used in the killing, the source said.

Sanchez fled after the shooting, prompting an extensive search. Witnesses at the crowded pier took cell phone pictures of the assailant, which police forwarded to officers fanning out along the Embarcadero. About 20 minutes later, officers found Sanchez hiding in a cubbyhole in a pier near Townsend Street.

“A huge thanks goes to the public,” Suhr said. “This is an unspeakable tragedy. Everyone helped to make sure we got him.”

Meanwhile, Steinle’s parents continued to make final arrangements for their daughter.

“We’re very lucky that we’re such a loving and close family,” she said. “There’s nothing that together we cannot deal with.”

Evan Sernoffsky and Jaxon Van Derbeken are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSeronffsky, @jvanderbeken