Illegal Immigrant Felons Avoid Jail With Jobs Program

A county prosecutor running for California attorney general operates a program that allows illegal immigrant drug offenders to avoid prison by completing work training that prepares them for jobs they cannot legally hold. 

San Francisco County prosecutor Kamala Harris wants to be the top law enforcer in the nation’s most populous state yet she knowingly permits deportable illegal alien felons to clear their criminal records by participating in the taxpayer-funded job training. A prosecutor for nearly two decades, Harris justifies the outrageous arrangement by saying that it’s not the duty of local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws. 

The story was first reported by a major southern California newspaper that highlighted an appalling example in its report; an illegal immigrant who violently assaulted a woman months after pleading guilty to a drug felony. The illegal alien avoided prison thanks to the San Francisco County prosecutor’s job program (Back on Track), which is billed as an innovative education and employment reentry initiative to keep narcotics offenders from cycling in and out of jail. 

Harris, the first female District Attorney in San Francisco’s history, proudly touts Back on Track as a valuable measure that increases neighborhood safety and helps young offenders turn their lives around by preventing them from committing crimes. This is supposedly accomplished with strict accountability and close supervision with education, employment support and health care.  

First elected as San Francisco County prosecutor in 2003 and easily reelected in 2007, Harris portrays herself as a tough no-nonsense career prosecutor on her official attorney general campaign website. It brags that, under her leadership, the felony conviction rate is the highest in more than a decade and that there has been an increase of 50% in the amount of violent offenders sent to state prison. 

While these statistics may be difficult to confirm, one thing is for certain; officials in San Francisco, the first major U.S. city to offer illegal immigrants municipal identification cards, have a long history of protecting even the most violent criminals from deportation. Its sanctuary policy came under fire last year after a pair of incidents involving previously convicted illegal immigrant felons received national attention. 

In the first a Salvadoran gang member, previously convicted of two felonies, brutally murdered a father and his two sons within city limits. Besides serving jail time and numerous law enforcement encounters, the violent illegal alien was never reported to federal immigration authorities for deportation. 

Weeks later a different illegal immigrant gang banger, also protected from deportation after several felony convictions, got arrested for violently stabbing a man. Authorities called it an “especially vicious” crime because the victim was “gutted” like a “pig.”