As San Francisco's district attorney, Kamala Harris ran a city program that kept illegal immigrants out of prison by training them for jobs they couldn't get legally.
Harris, who served as San Francisco's district attorney from 2004 to 2011, led an effort called “Back on Track” during her time as the city's top prosecutor. according to According to a 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times, the program was aimed at helping felons expunge their convictions, but Harris said at the time that she was unaware that undocumented immigrants were also being singled out for her office. (Related article: Experts say Biden's immigration bill has more holes than the border, deceiving Americans)
According to the Los Angeles Times, Governor Harris only became aware of the loophole after an attack by an illegal immigrant on a woman in San Francisco.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Amanda Kiefer was walking to dinner in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood in July 2008 when an illegal immigrant snatched her purse and forced her into an SUV. The man, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, and the driver of the car tried to run her over, but when she jumped in the car to avoid being hit, the driver slammed on the brakes, throwing her onto the sidewalk, leaving her with a fractured skull and blood oozing from her ears.
TOP SHOT – US President Joe Biden (L) and US Vice President Kamala Harris hold hands and gesture as they watch the Independence Day fireworks from the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington DC on July 4, 2024. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP) (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the Los Angeles Times, Izaguirre had pleaded guilty several months earlier to a drug offense for selling cocaine, but was selected to participate in the “Back on Track” program, an initiative launched by Harris when he was the city's top prosecutor, and avoided prison time. But it was also discovered that Izaguirre is in the U.S. illegally, raising questions about why he was selected for the program if he is not allowed to work in the U.S. in the first place.
Harris told the Los Angeles Times that allowing undocumented immigrants into the program is a “design flaw.”
“We believe we have solved the problem,” she said at the time, “so going forward, it's important that we make sure that no one can enter Back on Track if they are unable to obtain lawful employment.”
“The purpose of this program is to enable these people to obtain and maintain legal employment, which they likely wouldn't be able to do if they were illegally here, so continuing to enroll them would go against the very spirit of the program,” Harris told the outlet.
The exact number of illegal immigrants selected for the program is unclear, and Harris said she never asked how many were enrolled, according to the LA Times. The program is overseen by the San Francisco branch of Goodwill Industries International, whose supervisor, Carlos Serrano Quan, estimated that fewer than a dozen illegal immigrants were enrolled.
According to the Los Angeles Times, undocumented immigrants who start the program are allowed to complete it, and Harris argued that it is not the role of local police to enforce federal immigration law.
Harris has a long history of opposing federal immigration enforcement, extending beyond her term as San Francisco's attorney general.
As a U.S. Senator, she F- Trump, who received the highest ratings from NumbersUSA for his opposition to the Border Patrol and other amnesty measures, likened Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Ku Klux Klan during his Senate confirmation hearing and suggested in a June 2018 media interview that ICE should be rebuilt “from the ground up.”
Harris is one of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Raised hand When asked if she supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, Harris replied: As vice president, Harris was tapped to lead the Biden administration's efforts to address the root causes of illegal migration from Central America, but during her time in office she oversaw more than 7 million illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border. Data Show.
Harris became a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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