Vice President Kamala Harris has touted her experience as a prosecutor in her 2024 presidential run, with her campaign saying she has “never hesitated to take on those who seek to harm the American people.”
But as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris ran a program that provided job training and expungement for illegal immigrants arrested on drug charges — and who avoided deportation thanks to the city’s sanctuary policies.
Harris touted “Back on Track” but one of the criminals she selected for the program, Alexander Izaguirre, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, is accused of brutally assaulting a young woman, leaving her with a fractured skull and long-term trauma.
Harris later called the attack “like a big pimple on the program.”
The prosecutor’s office selected Izaguirre for the program after he was arrested twice over an eight-month period on charges of purse snatching and selling cocaine. The LA Times reported. at that time.
In July 2008, while participating in the Back on Track program, Izagirre committed another crime: Authorities say he stole the purse of Amanda Keefer, a San Francisco resident, as she was heading to a restaurant with a friend in the Pacific Heights neighborhood.
Authorities said Izaguirre stole her purse, then got into an SUV and tried to run her over, after which Kiefer got on the hood of the car and slammed on the brakes, throwing the 29-year-old Izaguirre onto the road and fracturing his skull.
Kiefer told the Los Angeles Times in 2009 that he fled California for good after the attack, and said he didn’t understand why illegal criminals weren’t deported.
Ms. Harris was running for state attorney general when Ms. Kiefer’s case came to light and expressed dismay that undocumented immigrants were being accepted into her program.
“The immigration issues related to the Izagirre case are obviously a major issue for the program,” Harris told the Los Angeles Times. She later walked back the analogy, saying, “I’m not going to downplay this or sweep it under the rug.”
She supported Izaguirre’s deportation after the assault and said the program had been changed to require participants to have documentation showing they could work legally.
But she got the remaining undocumented immigrants in “Back on Track” to complete the program.
“My question was, how can I prevent this from happening in the future?” she told the Los Angeles Times at the time.
Harris’ record in San Francisco is also tainted by her strong support for sanctuary city policies.
In 2006, her spokesman said, “We are and will remain a sanctuary city, a city of refuge.”
The sanctuary city policy did not allow local authorities to question immigrant status unless they had committed a crime, but the policy was interpreted loosely by several city departments, resulting in many violent criminals being let back onto the streets.
In June 2008, Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with a criminal record, killed a father and two sons: Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, who he shot without provocation during a traffic stop. Prosecutors later argued that Ramos likely mistook them for gang members.
Ramos had a criminal record as a minor. He was involved in a gang assault on a bus passenger and an attempted robbery of a pregnant woman, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. In both criminal cases, the juvenile probation department did not involve federal immigration authorities because city policy did not question legal status.
San Francisco, California Kepix
In March 2008, just months before the Bologna murders, he was caught by police sitting in the window of a tinted car with no license plates next to another gang member who was trying to throw away the gun used in both murders, and then released again. Police decided not to file charges because they couldn’t prove Ramos knew about the gun, the Chronicle reported.
Danielle Bologna, the Bologna family’s widow and mother, sued the city in 2009, alleging that a careless interpretation of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy led to her family’s murder. A judge dismissed the suit, finding that city officials were not responsible for Ramos’ actions, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Daniel Bologna pleaded with Harris at the time to seek the death penalty for Ramos.
“The district attorney really needs to pay attention. She doesn’t have kids and doesn’t understand what this means,” her mother said of Harris. The Chronicle reported. In 2008.
Harris Did not seek the death penalty She supported Ramos and supported life in prison without parole, in line with her campaign pledge against the death penalty.
The Harris campaign did not respond to inquiries from The Washington Post.
