The Department of Homeland Security says California's sanctuary law let the man accused of killing 68-year-old Todd Stewart walk free. But the federal government has offered two irreconcilable dates for when it actually asked to hold him — and by its own account to the Chronicle, one of them landed after Stewart was already dead.

The Aug. 6 killing of Stewart during an attempted burglary at his Martinez home has become the newest front in the Trump administration's long war on California's sanctuary law. Border czar Tom Homan went on Fox News to pin the death on Gov. Gavin Newsom. But the administration's central claim — that it wanted Marcos Iriarte-Valdez in immigration custody and was blocked — rests on a timeline the agency itself has told two different versions of, and on a "detainer" that, under the law, local jails were never obligated to honor.

The politics arrived fast. Within days of Todd Stewart's death, border czar Tom Homan told Fox News (external source, opens in a new tab) the 68-year-old was "dead because" of Newsom and a state government that, in his telling, values politics over public safety. Homeland Security branded the accused killer, 36-year-old Marcos Iriarte-Valdez, a "criminal alien" and said sanctuary politicians had blood on their hands, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (external source, opens in a new tab).

The argument only works if federal agents actually tried to take Iriarte-Valdez and were stopped. Here the government's own account falls apart.

DHS told Fox News it had lodged an immigration detainer for the suspect back in September 2025. But when the Chronicle pressed the department directly, DHS said it placed the detainer on August 8 — which, the paper noted, was after Stewart had already been killed. The department never reconciled the two dates, nor explained when the suspect's immigration status supposedly changed. In the same statement, it even mangled his name, rendering it "Marcos Eduardo Iriarte Valdezusper," and left that unexplained when asked.

Within days of Todd Stewart's death, border czar Tom Homan told Fox News the 68-year-old was "dead because" of Newsom and a state government that, in his telling, values politics over public safety.

A detainer is not an arrest warrant. It is a request that a jail notify ICE before releasing someone and hold them up to 48 hours longer. It carries no judicial signature, and honoring it is not mandatory. It is "not a lawful order," said Chesa Boudin, who ran the San Francisco DA's office and now directs a criminal-justice center at UC Berkeley; a jail that holds someone on another agency's say-so, he told the Chronicle, risks a civil-rights lawsuit. Boudin's point cuts to the core of the feud: if ICE genuinely wanted Iriarte-Valdez, it could have obtained a warrant. "If ICE had a warrant for his arrest, he would have been held," he said.

Newsom's office made the same argument in plainer terms. Nothing stopped federal agents from tracking Iriarte-Valdez's public court hearings and arresting him if they wanted to, spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said — "they didn't," she added, and are now trying to shift blame. His court dates were a matter of record; he appeared before a Contra Costa County judge on Aug. 5, the day before the killing.

The man at the center of the case is a poor fit for the "criminal alien" billboard. Iriarte-Valdez was admitted to the U.S. legally in 2007, DHS itself confirmed. He is a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo engineering graduate who worked at Boeing and Ametek (external source, opens in a new tab) and owned a Martinez townhouse he had listed for roughly half a million dollars before, by his listing agent's account, sliding toward foreclosure. His record before this spring was a misdemeanor protective-order violation, not a rap sheet.

None of that lessens the horror of Stewart's death. A family friend recounted that he had been out in his garage and moved to stop the intruder before he was stabbed in his own front yard. Prosecutors have charged Iriarte-Valdez with special-circumstance murder; a judge denied him bail (external source, opens in a new tab) as a danger to the public, and he faces life without parole, with the Contra Costa County district attorney vowing to hold him accountable.

But accountability for a stabbing and a federal claim about sanctuary law are two different things. The Contra Costa Sheriff's Office noted in a 2024 report that it does not honor detainers and provides release notifications only for inmates convicted of serious or violent felonies — which Iriarte-Valdez was not. On the one fact that would make the administration's story cohere — that it sought this man before Stewart was killed — the government's own dates place its request afterward.