Harris also supports sanctuary policies linked to the release of violent criminals.
While she was San Francisco’s district attorney, Vice President Kamala Harris hired an illegal immigrant who attacked a woman to be part of a free jobs program.
Harris has consistently claimed that she has spent her career fighting individuals and institutions who harm the American public and has been broadcasting this message since beginning her presidential bid. But her tenure as San Francisco District Attorney reveals otherwise.
During her time as a prosecutor, Harris implemented a program known as “Back on Track” to rehabilitate illegal immigrants arrested for drug crimes through education and job training. Harris supported this initiative as a model for criminal justice reform.
(Related: Media rewrites history, claims Kamala was never Biden’s “border czar” in charge of migrant problem.)
However, the program faced scrutiny when one of its participants, Alexander Izaguirre, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, committed a violent crime while enrolled.
Izaguirre, who had been arrested twice within eight months for purse snatching and selling cocaine, was selected for “Back on Track” by Harris’s office.
But in July 2008, while Izaguirre was enrolled in the program, he assaulted Amanda Kiefer, a San Francisco resident, in a brutal attack that left her with a fractured skull and long-term trauma. At that time, Izaguirre stole Kiefer’s purse and, in his attempt to escape, got into an SUV and tried to run her down. Kiefer clung to the hood of the vehicle before being thrown onto the road, resulting in severe injuries. The attack prompted Kiefer to leave California permanently. He avoided deportation and still received job training.
When his story surfaced in 2009 during Harris’ campaign to be California’s attorney general, she expressed regret about the program’s oversight regarding illegal immigrants and expressed her confusion and anger over why individuals with criminal records were not being deported.
“The immigration issue, as it relates to the Izaguirre case, obviously is a huge kind of pimple on the face of this program,” Harris said at the time. “I don’t mean to trivialize it, nor do I mean to cover it up.” She was left with no choice but to support the deportation of Izaguirre and revised the “Back on Track” criteria to require participants to provide documentation proving their eligibility to work legally. But Harris still allowed the remaining illegal immigrants in the program to complete their training.
“My issue was more, what are we going to do to prevent this from happening in the future?” she said at the time. And now, she is touting her time as a prosecutor in her 2024 presidential bid.
Harris also supports sanctuary policies linked to the release of violent criminals
Aside from the “Back on Track” program, she also supported sanctuary policies, which have been linked to the release of violent criminals, as a San Francisco District Attorney.
In fact, a 2006 statement from her spokesperson declared, “We are a sanctuary city, a city of refuge, and we always will be.” This policy, which protects undocumented immigrants, prohibited local authorities from questioning individuals’ immigration status unless they committed a crime.
However, the loose interpretation of several city departments about the policies has been implicated in multiple violent crimes.
For instance, the notorious case of Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with a significant criminal history, committed a triple murder in June 2008. Ramos fatally shot Tony Bologna, 48, and his two sons Michael, 20 and Matthew, 16, at a traffic stop. Prosecutors suggested that Ramos mistakenly believed the victims were rival gang members.
Ramos was charged with gang-related assault and an attempted robbery, yet the juvenile probation department did not involve federal immigration authorities due to the sanctuary city policy.
At the time, Danielle Bologna, the widow and mother of the Bologna victims, pleaded with Harris to seek the death penalty for Ramos. But Harris clung to her anti-death penalty stance and instead advocated for a life sentence without parole for Ramos.
In March 2008, just months before the Bologna murders, Ramos was found in a car with another gang member who had tried to discard a gun used in a double killing. Charges were not filed against Ramos as police could not prove his knowledge of the gun.
In line with this, Danielle Bologna filed a lawsuit against the city in 2009. She argued that the lenient interpretation of sanctuary city policies contributed to the death of her family. However, a judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that city officials were not responsible for Ramos’ actions.
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