A bumpy road lies ahead for D.A. Kamala Harris, who just kicked off her bid for State Attorney General. It seems the focal point of her campaign, a rehabilitaion program for low-level narcotics offenders confidently titled Back on Track, is coming under fire. According to a recent report, the District Attorney's program "trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn't legally hold." One grim example, the LA Times points out, was an illegal immigrant / cocaine dealer who attacked, mugged, and fractured the skull of onetime resident Amanda Kiefer. After getting arrested, the culprit, Alexander Izaguirre, "avoided prison when he was picked for a jobs program run by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris ...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."

Illegal immigrants, more or less, cannot legally be employed. So, as soon as Harris "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."

Harris went on to tell the Times, "I believe we fixed it ... So moving forward, it is about making sure that no one enters Back on Track if they cannot hold legal employment." She went on to say, "the immigration issue, as it relates to the Izaguirre case, obviously is a huge kind of pimple on the face of this program," later regretting the remark, adding, "I don't mean to trivialize it, nor do I mean to cover it up."

LA Times