A woman who became a violent crime victim thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’s “Back on Track” jobs program for felons is speaking out years later while campaigning with former President Donald Trump.
Amanda Kiefer was 29 years old when, in 2008, she was nearly killed when then-20-year-old illegal alien Alexander Izaguirre, a convicted felon, tried to run her over with a stolen SUV. Kiefer jumped on the hood of the car to avoid being killed but suffered a fractured skull.
“The night I was walking to dinner in Pacific Heights — it was a nice neighborhood. You wouldn’t expect, [in] broad daylight, for something violent to happen to you on the way to dinner,” Kiefer said while campaigning with Trump in Arizona on Thursday. “The police were great. They had caught him and his accomplice in a really short time…they were laughing as they fractured my skull.”
Just months before Izaguirre nearly killed Kiefer, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris placed him into her “Back on Track” jobs program for convicted felons rather than locking him up in prison on a drug sale conviction and turning him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The Back on Track program, which Harris created in 2005, allows those 18 to 30 years old to plead guilty to drug felonies if they agree to spend a year in the jobs program, living where they choose.
“…[T]he worst part about it all, though, was when I found out that taxpayer money was paying for job training for this guy who avoided going to prison for the first felony he committed, for jobs he couldn’t legally hold,” Kiefer said.
“It was kind of a wake-up moment for me, and I moved out of San Francisco because I didn’t feel safe there. And I don’t think our country is going to be safe under Kamala Harris. [Emphasis added]”
Harris did not acknowledge Kiefer’s violent assault until a year later, in 2009, when she told the Los Angeles Times that “the Izaguirre case, obviously, is a huge, kind of, pimple on the face of [the Back on Track] program.”
“I don’t mean to trivialize it, nor do I mean to cover it up,” Harris told the Times.
There were other illegal aliens placed into the Back on Track program instead put in prison or turned over to ICE agents, the Times reported. “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.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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