For Diana Glebova for the New York Post
Vice President Kamala Harris is touting her time as prosecutor in her 2024 run, with her campaign saying she has never “shyed away from standing up to those who harm the American people.”
But as San Francisco's district attorney, Harris ran a program that allowed illegal immigrants arrested on drug charges to get job training and have their records expunged, all while avoiding deportation because of the city's sanctuary policies .
Harris promoted “Back on Track” even though one of the criminals he chose for the show, Honduran illegal migrant Alexander Izaguirre, allegedly brutally assaulted a young woman, leaving her with a fractured skull and trauma long-term.
Harris later referred to the attack as “a big big slap in the face of this program”.
The prosecutor's office chose Izaguirre for the program after he was arrested twice in eight months for allegedly stealing a purse and for selling cocaine. the LA Times reported at the time.
In July 2008, while on the program “Torn a la pista”, Izaguirre committed another crime. According to authorities, he stole the purse of Amanda Kiefer, a San Francisco resident who had been walking with her friend to a restaurant in the Pacific Heights area.
After grabbing her purse, Izaguirre got into an SUV and tried to run her over, authorities said. Kiefer climbed onto the hood of the car and slammed on the brakes, throwing the 29-year-old onto the road and fracturing her skull.
Kiefer told the LA Times in 2009 that the attack led her to flee California for good and that she did not understand why illegal criminals were not being deported.
When Kiefer's story came to light, while Harris was running for state attorney general, he expressed regret that illegal immigrants would be allowed into his program.
“The immigration issue, in terms of the Izaguirre case, is obviously kind of looming large in the face of this show,” Harris told the LA Times. He then walked back his metaphor, saying, “I don't want to trivialize it, and I don't want to cover it up.”
He said he supported Izaguirre's deportation after the assault and that the program was changed to require participants to have documents showing they can work legally.
But he let the remaining illegal immigrants on “Back on Track” complete the program.
“My problem was more, what are we going to do to prevent this from happening in the future?” he said at the time, according to the LA Times.
Harris' record in San Francisco was also tainted by his strong support for sanctuary city policies.
In 2006, its spokesman said that “we are a sanctuary city, a city of refuge, and always will be.”
Under sanctuary city policies, local authorities were not allowed to question immigration status unless they committed a crime. But the policy was loosely interpreted by various city departments, resulting in many violent criminals being released 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 in a triple murder. He shot Tony Bologna, 48, and his two sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, for no apparent reason during a traffic stop. Prosecutors would later argue that Ramos likely mistook them for gang members.
Ramos had a history of criminal behavior as a youth. He was involved in a gang-related 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 it was city policy not to challenge legal status.
He was released again in March 2008, just months before the Bologna killings, after he was caught by police in a tinted window of an unlicensed car, sitting next to another gang member who had tried to throw away a gun used in a double murder. . Police said they would not press charges because they could not prove Ramos knew about the gun, the Chronicle reported.
Danielle Bologna, widow and mother of the Bologna family, sued the city in 2009, alleging that San Francisco's lax interpretation of sanctuary city policies led to her family's murder. A judge dismissed the suit, arguing that city officials were not responsible for what Ramos did, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Danielle 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, she doesn't know what this means,” the mother said of Harris. reports the Chronicle in the year 2008.
Harris did not seek the death penalty for Ramos and instead advocated life in prison without parole, fulfilling his campaign promise against the death penalty.
Harris' campaign did not respond to an inquiry from The Post.
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