Thread: San Francisco D.A.'s program trained illegal immigrants

San Francisco D.A.'s program trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn't legally hold

As she runs for state attorney general, prosecutor Kamala Harris faces questions over a program that trained illegal immigrant drug felons for jobs and kept them out of jail.
By Michael Finnegan
6:40 PM PDT, June 21, 2009

Reporting from San Francisco -- The assault on Amanda Kiefer at dusk in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights was extraordinary enough for its cruelty.

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, flinging 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 undocumented 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 undocumented 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?"

Harris said she first learned that illegal immigrants were training for jobs in Back on Track when Izaguirre, then 20, was arrested for the Kiefer assault and other crimes on a purse-snatching spree.

Izaguirre had been selected for the program after two arrests within eight months; an alleged purse-snatching preceded his arrest for selling cocaine. Because completion leads to the expunging of a felony conviction, the program has a waiting list of potential entrants. Selections are made solely by the district attorney's office.

It was a mistake, Harris said, to let illegal immigrants into the program, a "flaw in the design."

"I believe we fixed it," Harris said in an interview at her office in San Francisco. "So moving forward, it is about making sure that no one enters Back on Track if they cannot hold legal employment."

Exactly how many illegal immigrants have been included since the program began four years ago is not publicly known.

Harris said that after Izaguirre's arrest she never asked -- and has never learned -- how many illegal immigrants were in the program. Sharon Woo and Sharon Owsley, the prosecutors who oversee the program, said they too never asked and have never learned the number.

But after the interviews, Harris spokeswoman Erica Derryck said the D.A.'s office had in fact "assessed who would not have been able to meet" the new requirement for legal papers to obtain a job.

"We deliberated on how best to handle this group, given that they entered the program under different criteria," Derryck said -- in other words, as illegal immigrants.

The San Francisco chapter of Goodwill Industries International handles day-to-day oversight of Back on Track participants for the D.A.'s office. Carlos Serrano-Quan, a Goodwill supervisor, said it appeared that fewer than a dozen undocumented immigrants had been in the program.

Whatever the number, Harris said that once she realized that illegal immigrants were enrolled, she allowed those who were following the rules to finish the program and have their criminal records cleared. It is not the duty of local law enforcement, she said, to enforce federal immigration laws.

"My issue was more, what are we going to do to prevent this from happening in the future?" she said.

Some of the illegal immigrants were allowed to graduate before finishing an entire 12 months of the program, as normally required, according to the D.A.'s spokeswoman.

"The whole point of the program," Harris said, "is that these people would be able to obtain and hold down lawful employment, and if they're undocumented, they probably would not be able to do that, so it would go against the very spirit of the program" to continue admitting them.

Harris, 44, was elected district attorney in 2003 and reelected in 2007. She designed Back on Track to help young adults who are arrested once for selling drugs; the goal is to help them avoid falling into a life of crime. Like cities and counties across the nation, San Francisco was already running several programs with that goal.

Back on Track participants agree to plead guilty to a drug felony and spend a year in the program, a mix of community service, employment and life-skills training, family counseling and English lessons for those who need them. While in the program, they are free to live where they wish.

Even natural adversaries of the district attorney have applauded Back on Track.

"It's very innovative for the district attorney to have a program like this," said Simin Shamji, a deputy public defender in San Francisco. It might work better, she said, if the D.A.'s office ceded some control and collaborated more with social service agencies.

Over the last four years, 113 admitted drug dealers have graduated from the program, while 99 were yanked for failing to meet the requirements and sentenced under their guilty plea, according to the D.A.'s office.

Harris said graduates of the program are far less likely than other offenders to commit crimes again, but her spokeswoman declined to provide detailed statistics.

In her campaign for attorney general, Harris calls Back on Track a model for a statewide approach to preventing crime and easing prison overcrowding.

The campaign has consumed much of Harris' time in recent months. Last week, she was raising money at homes in Calabasas, Studio City, Pacific Palisades and Hollywood.

Harris' liberal San Francisco pedigree will pose challenges in a statewide race, particularly her 2004 vow to "never charge the death penalty." That pledge will be put to the test in the upcoming murder trial of Ramos, the illegal immigrant accused in the shooting deaths of a man and his two sons. Harris has not announced whether she will seek the death penalty.

Now, the Izaguirre case adds a new complication to her campaign.

"The immigration issue, as it relates to the Izaguirre case, obviously is a huge kind of pimple on the face of this program," Harris acknowledged. An instant later, she regretted the metaphor, saying, "I don't mean to trivialize it, nor do I mean to cover it up."

Handcuffed and wearing an orange jail uniform, Izaguirre appeared Wednesday in a San Francisco courtroom. He told a judge he would plead guilty to robbery for the July 2008 purse-snatchings. But for reasons that were left unclear, he then abruptly withdrew the plea and backed out of a deal with prosecutors that would have put him in jail for three years and four months. His trial is set to begin Sept. 4 and he could be deported afterward.

"He is being prosecuted, and he will be deported with my full encouragement and support," Harris said.

Kiefer, who packages medical devices for a living, said she has left California for good, in part because of the trauma of nearly having been killed on her way to dinner last summer in Pacific Heights. Nearly a year later, she remains baffled that San Francisco authorities ever let Izaguirre and other illegal immigrant felons back onto the streets.

"If they're committing crimes," she said, "I think there's something wrong that they're not being deported."

michael.finnegan

@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 7924.story

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 undocumented felons in Back on Track.

I smell a lawsuit against the city of San Franciso!

Whatever the number, Harris said that once she realized that illegal immigrants were enrolled, she allowed those who were following the rules to finish the program and have their criminal records cleared. It is not the duty of local law enforcement, she said, to enforce federal immigration laws.

Aiding and abetting illegal aliens is a federal crime and as the city's D.A., Harris knows that. Local law enforcement does not have a 'free pass' that allows them to knowingly break federal law.

Oh please.....it's SF. They knew damned well that illegal aliens were being enrolled in this program.

Unless I'm mistaken, illegal aliens have been found to commit the majority of crimes in CA, including SF.

If they didn't enroll them in the program, they most likely would not have had enough enrollment to keep the program functioning and bye-bye all kinds of funding they were receiving to operate it......and which, given the corruption rampant in SF government, was most likely providing a tidy little sum of "extra money" for certain people.

Harris got caught in the big lie and is trying to CHA, that's all.

Kamala Devi Harris (born October 21, 1964, in Oakland, California) is the current District Attorney of San Francisco. She is the first female District Attorney to be elected in San Francisco, the first African American elected as District Attorney in California, and the first Indian American elected to the position in the United States. She was elected in December 2003 with over 56 percent of the votes in a run-off election against the two-term incumbent, Terence Hallinan. She was also cited by the New York Times to be among the seventeen most likely women to become the first female President of the United States.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris

San Francisco District Attorney's Office Contact Us

Criminal Division
Hall of Justice
850 Bryant Street, Room 322
San Francisco, CA 94103

Special Operations Division
732 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

General Information (415) 553-1751
(8 a.m. to 5 p.m.)

(415) 553-1752
(After Hours)

To contact the District Attorney
DistrictAttorney@Sfgov.org

http://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/page.asp?id=33

So nice to know that while the American people are losing their jobs and homes that our government is able to help employ illegals. Disgusting.


God Bless and Help the American People!

Added to homepage
http://www.alipac.us/article4323.html

Well, here's why this is:

In Sacramento, (this is one of my personal causes here) an illegal coyote ran over a sacramento man while transporting illegals, and then told everyone to run. He was caught, but after all of his crimes, he got a light, and mostly suspended sentence. One of the provisions in his sentence was that he is REQUIRED to be employed during his probation.
A state judge is requiring an illegal alien to be employed, or go to jail....

http://publicdocumentdistributors.com/f ... d.php?t=28

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 undocumented 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?"

That's a great question Amanda Kiefer! But don't bother asking Kamala Harris for the answer. She will simply claim she didn't know illegal invaders were being enrolled in the program. If pressed further, she will rely on the old standby, ( public officials love to use when they get caught with their pants down on this issue) "it's not the job of local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law." They love that one!

Meanwhile, illegal invader and convicted felon, Alexander Izaguirre, continued to operate with inpunity. The United States is one giant playground for these criminals, whereby they simply do as they please. Elected officials like Kamala Harris turn a blind eye or provide outright sanctuary to these illegal invader predators.

Unfortunately, it's not people like Kamala Harris who end up being victimized because of these insane( or lack thereof) policies towards illegal invaders. Rather, everyday people like Amanda Kiefer, just trying to do the best they can, are usually the ones paying the price.

Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris.

I will remember this name come election time. You'll never get my vote.

D.A.'s office let illegal immigrants go
Jaxon Van Derbeken

Tuesday, June 23, 2009



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(06-22) 19:21 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris' office on Monday defended allowing about a half dozen first-time drug offenders to clear their records by going through a job-training program, even after prosecutors learned they were deportable as undocumented immigrants.

But Harris' aides said they have since made changes in the program that would prevent a recurrence of instances in which illegal immigrants got their criminal records cleared by going through the Back on Track jobs program, which trains offenders for jobs that undocumented immigrants legally would be prevented from holding.

The Los Angeles Times first reported Monday that illegal immigrants had been enrolled in the program and that Harris' office had let several graduate and go free even after learning of their status.

The fallout Monday highlighted the pitfalls that could lie ahead for San Francisco politicians seeking higher office from a statewide electorate more conservative than the city's.

Last year, Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is now a candidate for governor, ordered juvenile justice officials to stop shielding illegal immigrant youths who commit crimes from possible deportation. On Monday, it was Harris, a candidate for attorney general, who came under scrutiny on the illegal immigration issue.

Not S.F.'s job
Harris was quoted in the Times as saying that enforcing federal immigration law was not the job of local authorities. The district attorney was explaining how her office handled the case of Alexander Izaguirre, an illegal immigrant from Honduras who had been enrolled in the Back on Track program in July when he allegedly robbed a woman of her purse in Pacific Heights, then got into an SUV that drove into the victim.

The woman, Amanda Kiefer, 30, suffered a fractured skull. She said in an interview Monday that she had gotten a good look at Izaguirre and the SUV driver.

"They were both laughing," Kiefer said.

Izaguirre, then 20, was one of at least seven undocumented immigrants who participated the Back on Track program, which Harris created in 2005 as a way of reducing the number of drug offenders sent to overcrowded county jails and state prisons. In all, 113 people have successfully completed the program, with 99 failures, according to prosecutors' statistics.

Sold drugs in Tenderloin
Izaguirre was enrolled in the program after admitting to dealing drugs to an undercover officer in the Tenderloin in late 2007. He had two previous arrests, one for drugs and the other for purse snatching, records show. The charges were dropped.

The district attorney told the Times that she had not known Izaguirre was an illegal immigrant until after he was arrested for the alleged assault. Harris did not return repeated phone calls for comment Monday, and representatives of her office said she was not available.

Sheriff's deputies, who run the city's jails, screened Izaguirre after his drug arrest Dec. 7, 2007, and determined that he could fit the profile for reporting to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, sheriff's spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said.

But Hirst said there is no record of whether deputies had actually referred Izaguirre to immigration officials, who could then have asked the city to put a hold on his release. She added that the department did not keep records of referrals at the time, but now does.

Feds have a hold now
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency placed a hold on Izaguirre in August, after he was arrested in the alleged robbery. He is still in custody awaiting trial on robbery and assault charges.

Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo, who oversees the Back on Track program, said Monday that prosecutors had assumed that offenders who sought to enroll were here legally because they had been screened by the Sheriff's Department.

After Izaguirre was arrested in the alleged assault, however, Harris' office checked and learned that six other offenders enrolled in Back on Track were not qualified to work in the United States, presumably because they were illegal immigrants.

Woo said all had been in the yearlong program for at least eight months and had been meeting all of the requirements, so Harris' office allowed them to finish the program early and have their criminal records expunged.

'Design flaw'
"Those individuals were in the program for a long period," Woo said. "When we realized there was a design flaw and they were without the ability to show they could work here legally," she said, her office "sat down and asked, 'What are we supposed to do here?' "

Prosecutors concluded that they had struck what was in essence a contract with the offenders, who had fulfilled everything that was required of them.

Woo said that the "flaw" in the program had been fixed after Izaguirre's arrest and that the program now asks all those who apply whether they can legally work here.

Kiefer, reached in Michigan, where she moved after the attack, called the idea of clearing illegal immigrants' criminal records "crazy."

"We should be spending our tax dollars on our own citizens, not on people who are allowed to stay here after committing crimes," she said.

"I understand the whole sanctuary city thing - if people aren't causing any problems, why waste time and resources going after them?" Kiefer said. "But if they are committing crimes, they should not be here."


E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.


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