A California woman who was the victim of a violent attack by an undocumented immigrant in 2008 is denouncing Vice President Kamala Harris, who, as San Francisco district attorney, launched a program that freed the victim’s attacker.
Amanda Kiefer was walking with a group of friends in San Francisco when 20-year-old Alexander Izaguirre stole her purse and then attempted to run her over with a waiting SUV, fracturing her skull.
Izaguirre, who was in the country illegally, had been arrested months before the attack on drug charges but was able to move freely thanks to a program started by Harris, then the city’s district attorney, that allowed nonviolent offenders to avoid prison and get job training and, eventually, have their criminal records expunged.
Kiefer, who was 29 at the time of the attack, is now speaking about the trauma for the first time in 15 years, telling ABC News the incident was a “wake-up call” for her.
HARRIS FAILED TO ADDRESS ‘ROOT CAUSES’ OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, FORMER BORDER PATROL UNION CHIEF SAYS
“When a policy affects you negatively, you wake up,” Keifer, now 45, told the outlet.
The vicious attack came back into focus after the Republican National Committee aired a two-minute campaign ad targeting Harris, claiming that the now vice president and Democratic presidential nominee was “liberal on illegal immigration before she even got to the White House.”
The ad highlighted Kiefer’s case, saying Harris “gave illegal immigrant drug traffickers the opportunity to get job training” instead of going to prison.
“If people who have committed crimes were allowed to stay out of prison to train for jobs they can’t legally do, I think most Americans would disapprove of that,” Kiefer said of the program.
The ABC News report noted that Harris had acknowledged in the past that the program, called “Back on Track” and touted as “smart on crime,” was not perfect, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2009 that there was a “flaw in the design” of the program that allowed illegal immigrants to remain free even though they were unlikely to benefit from job training.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at Westover High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on July 18, 2024. (ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)
MEDIA’S SUDDEN REJECTION OF KAMALA HARRIS’ ‘BORDER CZAR’ LABEL
“The purpose of the program was to provide a means of obtaining and maintaining legal employment” – and someone in the country illegally “would probably not be able to do that, which would therefore go against the very spirit of the program,” Harris said at the time.
“I think we’ve got that fixed,” Harris added. “So now it’s about making sure that no one gets into Back on Track who can’t hold down a legal job.”
The RNC ad and Kiefer’s intervention on the issue come as the Trump campaign seeks to highlight Harris’ record at the border, an issue that has been politically difficult for an administration that saw illegal crossings reach historic highs before recent asylum restrictions helped push those numbers to a three-year low in June.
Harris was given a leading role in helping address the crisis in the early days of the administration, tasked by President Biden with leading an effort to address the “root causes” of illegal migration, including through diplomatic outreach to the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
President Biden speaks with a member of the U.S. Border Patrol as they walk along the U.S.-Mexico border fence in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
However, critics say the vice president’s work on the issue has been a failure, arguing that Harris did not do enough to prevent what would become a growing crisis.
“It’s very disappointing,” Brandon Judd, who recently retired as president of the Border Patrol union, told Fox News Digital of Harris’ record at the border last week. “We gave her the policies she was supposed to implement. She refused to implement them.”
Kiefer, meanwhile, told ABC News that the experience was a “red pill moment” for her, leading her to abandon what she said were her liberal political views at the time and embrace candidates such as former President Trump.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox
