Kamala Harris championed sanctuary city policies — and these migrant crimes could come back to haunt her
Vice President Kamala Harris championed sanctuary cities when she served as district attorney in San Francisco, with her office saying at the time that “we are a sanctuary city, a city of refuge, and we always will be.”
Now with her as the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate and presumptive nominee, Republicans are pointing back to her liberal policies that were soft on illegal migrants.
Harris was elected as San Francisco’s DA in 2004, running on a campaign vowing to never impose the death penalty and supporting the city’s decades-old sanctuary city policy while in office.
Harris argued at the time that the policy allowed illegal migrants to come forward about crimes without fear of retribution for their immigration status.
Throughout the decades of her career, Harris has also stressed as late as 2019 that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”
Now that she’s the clear front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, The Post is looking back at some of the crimes committed on her watch by illegal migrants who benefited from sanctuary city policies — including migrants who had previous criminal records and weren’t deported.
Edwin Ramos
Edwin Ramos, an illegal migrant from El Salvador, committed a triple murder in 2008 in San Francisco when Harris was district attorney.
Ramos’ gruesome killings of three members of the Bologna family — Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16 — rocked national headlines and led then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to change the city’s policies on juvenile crimes.
Before the triple shooting, Ramos had been arrested several times as a juvenile for being involved in a gang-related assault on a bus passenger and an attempted robbery of a pregnant woman, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
In both cases, he was not referred to federal authorities because it was a city policy not to question the immigration status of juveniles.
In the weeks after the shooting, Newsom changed city policy so that illegal youths would be reported to federal authorities if they were arrested.
Harris did not seek the death penalty against Ramos, in keeping with her campaign promise, despite calls from the mother and widow Danielle Bologna.
“It was senseless,” Danielle Bologna said at the time, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
“And to think they didn’t deport him back, knowing that he did not have papers and he was here illegally, it is a big issue.”
“They need to take responsibility, the city,” she said.
“They didn’t do anything. … He should have been deported. This is huge. I’m extremely angry about this.”
Rony Aguilera
Rony Aguilera, an illegal migrant from Honduras, was another juvenile who was arrested during Harris’ reign and not turned over to federal authorities for his immigration status after being found guilty for a federal assault in a juvenile court, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
After being set free in 2007 despite the assault, Aguilera was involved in the gruesome gang-related murder of Ivan Miranda in 2008.
Miranda was walking on the street, returning an iPad to a friend, when Aguilera attacked him with a sword, nearly decapitating him.
Aguilera was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Alexander Izaguirre
Along with her support for sanctuary city policies, Harris led a program that allowed low-level drug offenders to enter the “Back on Track” program, which gave them job training and could expunge their criminal records.
The DA’s Office was in charge of picking candidates for the program, and notably took in illegal migrant Alexander Izaguirre, who came into the country from Honduras.
Izaguirre was chosen for the jobs program despite being arrested twice in eight months for allegedly snatching a purse and for selling cocaine, the LA Times reported.
While in the program in 2008, Izaguirre assaulted San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer.
He snatched her purse, jumped into an SUV, and ran Kiefer down with the vehicle, leaving her with a fractured skull.
At the time, Harris said accepting Izaguirre into the “Back on Track” program was a mistake.
But she allowed the other illegal migrants in the program to continue their terms and graduate.
“The immigration issue, as it relates to the Izaguirre case, obviously is a huge kind of pimple on the face of this program,” Harris told the LA Times.
She then said, “I don’t mean to trivialize it, nor do I mean to cover it up.”
Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate and Kate Steinle
Harris has also previously opposed a bill that would increase penalties for illegal migrants who repeatedly enter the US illegally.
As a senator in 2017, Harris helped strike down the Stop Illegal Reentry Act, also known as “Kate’s Law.”
The bill came in response to the 2015 killing of 32-year-old Kathryn “Kate” Steinle by Mexican national Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate.
At the time, Harris was California attorney general and had announced she was running for US Senate.
Steinle was walking along a pier in San Francisco with her dad when she was hit in the back by a stray bullet and killed. Garcia-Zarate claimed he found a gun under the bench he was sitting on and that it went off when he picked it up, killing Steinle by mistake.
Garcia-Zarate had seven prior felony convictions by the time he was arrested, and had been deported six times, only to re-enter each time.
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“Kate’s Law” first came up for a vote in 2015, only to be struck down by Senate Democrats.
The bill was brought up again in 2017, but Democrats — including then-Sen. Harris — struck it down again.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has tried to bring up the bill again in every session of Congress, most recently in 2023, but has faced hurdles getting it past the Democrat-majority Judiciary Committee.
by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco. Getty Images
Garcia-Zarate was acquitted of murder and manslaughter by a San Francisco jury in 2017.
The jury found him guilty of possessing a firearm as a felon, but that charge was later overturned.
Criticism
Republicans have heavily criticized Harris’ immigration record, especially as she has been tabbed to likely replace Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee.
Former President Donald Trump blasted Harris for her sanctuary city policies in a call with reporters on Tuesday.
“Kamala Harris also voted in favor of deadly sanctuary cities, which shield illegal alien criminals, murderers and gang members from deportation and arrest and was weak on crime,” Trump said.
“Kamala refused to seek the death penalty against anybody, no matter how devastating, whether it’s MS 13 gang members, no matter how bad the killing was, the murder was no matter what they did, she refused to have the death penalty.”
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, also weighed in on Harris’ border record.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’ actions show a complete disregard for border security, formed by either political ambition or incompetence,” he told reporters on the call.
“VP Harris knows the solutions, but she refuses to implement them, leaving me to conclude she is either politically powered, hungry for the base support, or she is dangerously incompetent,” Judd added, criticizing her lack of movement on border security during her time as vice president.
Harris’ campaign did not respond to an inquiry from The Post.
