It turns out San Francisco's Kamala Harris, the city's Democratic District Attorney, ran an illegal immgrant job training program that kept criminal offenders out of jail and in the country. Harris is now a candidate for the Democratic nomination for California Attorney General. From the Los Angeles Times, "San Francisco D.A.'s program trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn't legally hold":
The assault on Amanda Kiefer at dusk in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights was extraordinary enough for its cruelty.Read the whole thing at the link.
A stranger, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, snatched her purse and hopped into an SUV, police say. The driver sped forward to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and the driver laughing. The driver slammed on the brakes, propelling Kiefer to the pavement. Her skull fractured. Blood oozed from her ear.
Only after the July 2008 attack did Kiefer learn of the crime's political ramifications. Izaguirre, police told her, was an illegal immigrant who had pleaded guilty four months earlier to a drug felony for selling cocaine in the seedy Tenderloin area.
He had avoided prison when he was picked for a jobs program run by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, now a candidate for California's top law enforcement post. In effect, Harris' office had been allowing Izaguirre and other illegal immigrants to stay out of prison by training them for jobs they cannot legally hold.
The program, Back on Track, is a centerpiece of Harris' campaign for state attorney general. Until questioned by The Times about the Izaguirre case, Harris, a Democrat, had never publicly acknowledged that the program included illegal immigrants. In interviews last week, she and her office offered inconsistent explanations.
Izaguirre's trial this fall for the Kiefer attack -- his arrest forced him out of the program and into jail -- will put Harris in the middle of the controversy over San Francisco's lax policies toward illegal immigrants.
The city has a history of shielding some illegal immigrant criminals from deportation. The assault on Kiefer occurred just a month after a triple homicide in San Francisco that put Mayor Gavin Newsom on the spot over the city's repeated release of Edwin Ramos, the illegal immigrant accused of the slayings.
Izaguirre's assault arrest, by contrast, drew almost no public attention.
Kiefer, then 29, was walking with a friend to a restaurant when the attack occurred. To her, it makes no sense that the D.A.'s office would set Izaguirre free after his earlier drug arrest -- or enroll him and other illegal immigrant felons in Back on Track.
"If they've committed crimes and they're not citizens, then why are they here?" Kiefer asked. "Why haven't they been deported?"
I don't believe Harris' denials that she was unaware of illegal aliens participating in the program. San Francisco is a sanctuary city. This is what Democrats do.
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