COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former California attorney general, is facing new criticism for her role in sanctuary city policies before the 2015 murder of 32-year-old Katherine Steinle, and is reminding many that Democrats have repeatedly blocked “Kate’s Law” from passing the Senate.
Republican lawmakers crafted the bill, also known as the Prevent Illegal Reentry Act, in response to the murder of 56-year-old Mexican national Jose Ines Garcia Zarate in San Francisco, where Harris served as district attorney from 2004 to 2011.
At the time of his last arrest, Garcia Zarate had been convicted of seven felonies and had been deported from the United States to Mexico six times, each time re-entering the country illegally.
The incident also sparked fierce debate in another presidential election.
Former Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said at the time that the killing was “one more example of why we must immediately secure our border.”
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton also acknowledged that San Francisco “was a mistake” in allowing Garcia Zarate to stay in the country.
Harris has been criticized for her complicity in sanctuary city policies during her time as district attorney and attorney general, policies that some say allowed illegal gunmen to remain in the country for long periods of time.
As Frisco district attorney, Harris signed newspaper ads denouncing “anti-immigrant proposals.”
“We are and will remain a sanctuary city and a city of refuge,” the spokesman said.
Those criticisms have only intensified now that she’s running for president, and they have been joined by Democrats such as Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has repeatedly blocked bills to prevent similar killings.
“Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown are champions of sanctuary cities and amnesty policies that lead to tragedies like the murders of Kate Steinle and Laken Riley. Harris and Brown have consistently sided with illegal immigration over law and order and the safety of Americans,” the campaign of Brown’s Republican opponent, Colombian-American businessman Bernie Moreno, told The Washington Post.
Brown first appeared in the story in 2015, when he and other Senate Democrats He helped stop the Cato Act. The bill would impose a mandatory five-year prison sentence for any illegal immigrant arrested on a felony charge in the United States.
More than 30 Senate Democrats blocked a vote on a 2015 bill that included Cato’s Law and another provision that would have stripped federal funding from sanctuary cities. Brown complained that the bill would have cost taxpayers money “by increasing the federal prison population.”
Cato’s Law got another chance in 2017, but Democrats, including Harris, who was then a California senator, again killed the bill.
Harris has repeatedly criticized Republican immigration policies, telling the Voice of San Diego: July 2017 “The Trump administration’s immigration policies are creating a culture of fear, which is why we must stand up in California and fight for our identity and ideals as a country.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has tried to advance Cato’s Law in every Congress, including the 2023 session, but it has died repeatedly in the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee.
Brown’s office did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
“In essence, Kamala Harris helped write the sanctuary city policies that allowed Steinle and others to be murdered, and Sherrod Brown blocked a legislative amendment from becoming law,” Moreno’s campaign told The Washington Post.
Harris is President Biden’s top border official and is tasked with curbing the illegal immigration crisis, making her performance on the issue a major issue in the campaign.
A recent Gallup poll found that more than half of Americans support reducing immigration, the highest percentage since 2001.
Garcia Zarate served seven years in prison for illegal firearm possession (but was acquitted of murder), but was later placed on probation and ordered to leave the US in 2022.
“If you ever come back to this country and appear before me again, I will not forgive you. This is your final warning: Do not come back to this country,” U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, an Obama appointee, said before sending him to Texas for sentencing on a charge of failing to report his whereabouts after being released from a San Francisco prison a few months before the shooting of Steinle.
With recent polls showing a close race between Harris and Trump for the White House, these old ghosts are more frightening than ever.
