A California woman who in 2008 fell victim to a violent attack at the hands of an undocumented immigrant is speaking out against Vice President Kamala Harris, who as San Francisco District Attorney, launched a program that set the victim’s attacker free.
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 down in a waiting SUV, fracturing the woman’s skull.
Izaguirre, who was in the country illegally, had been arrested a few months prior to the attack on drug charges but was able to roam free thanks to a program launched by Harris, then the city’s district attorney, that allowed non-violent offenders to avoid jail and instead enter job training and eventually have their records expunged.
Kiefer, who was 29 at the time of the attack, is now speaking out about the trauma for the first time in 15 years, telling ABC News that the incident was a “wake up” call for her.
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“When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” Keifer, now 45, told the outlet.
The brutal attack has re-entered the spotlight after the Republican National Committee released a two-minute campaign advertisement targeting Harris, arguing that the now-vice president and Democratic nominee for president was “liberal on illegal immigration before she ever reached the White House.”
The ad highlighted the case of Kiefer, saying that Harris “allowed illegal immigrant drug dealers to enter job training” instead of being jailed.
“If people who committed crimes were allowed to stay out of prison to train for jobs they couldn’t legally hold, I think most Americans would disapprove of that,” Kiefer said of the program.
The ABC News report highlighted that Harris has in the past acknowledged that the program, which was called “Back on Track” and was touted as being “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 would be unlikely to take advantage of the 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)
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“The whole point of the program [was] … to obtain and hold down lawful employment” — and that someone in the country illegally “probably would not be able to do that, so it would go against the very spirit of the program,” Harris said at the time.
“I believe we fixed it,” Harris added. “So moving forward, it is about making sure that no one enters Back on Track if they cannot hold legal employment.”
The RNC ad and Kiefer speaking out on the issue comes as the Trump campaign seeks to highlight Harris’ record on the border, an issue that has been politically challenging for an administration that saw illegal crossings reach all-time highs before recent asylum restrictions helped those numbers dip to a three-year low in June.
Harris was given a prominent role in helping address the crisis in the early days of the administration, being tasked by President Biden to lead an effort to address the “root causes” of illegal migration, most notably 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 Jan. 8, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
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However, critics say the vice president’s work on the issue was 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’ border record last week. “We gave her the policies that she needed to implement. She refused to implement those.”
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 from the time and embrace candidates such as former President Trump.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
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