Kamala Harris championed sanctuary cities as San Francisco DA

According to the New York Post, when Harris was DA in 2004, she ran a campaign centered around never imposing the death penalty and upholding the California city's sanctuary policies for illegal immigrants. Harris argued at the time that the policies allowed illegal immigrants to report crimes without fear of being deported from their immigration status. She has also called the border wall a "vanity project" and said illegal immigration is "not an emergency" before.

After becoming the Democratic nominee in 2024, however, illegal immigration is a top issue for many in the US, and that history may come back to bite Harris as she goes forward in the campaign. The Post reported some of the crimes that happened on her watch in San Francisco that involved illegal immigrants who were not deported afterward.

Illegal immigrant Edwin Ramos committed a triple murder in 2008 in Harris' district. He had killed three members of the Bologna family in a gruesome shooting at the time. Ramos was known to law enforcement and had been arrested several times as a juvenile for being involved in gang-related assault on a bus as well as an attempted robbery of a pregnant mother.

In both cases, Ramos was not turned over to federal authorities or ICE because it was a city policy not to question the immigration status of minors. Weeks after the shooting, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom changed the city policy so that illegal immigrant minors were reported to federal authorities if they committed crimes.

Danielle Bologna said at the time, “And to think they didn’t deport him back, knowing that he did not have papers and he was here illegally, it is a big issue."

In another case with illegal immigrant Rony Aguilera from Honduras, he was arrested as a juvenile under Harris’ time as DA and was not turned over to federal authorities when he was found guilty of federal assault in juvenile court.

He was set free in 2007 and then Aguilera was involved in the gang-related murder of Ivan Miranda in 2008. Aguilera attacked Miranda with a sword, nearly decapitating him. Aguilera was then sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The Post listed multiple other cases that took place under Harris when she reigned as the San Francisco DA in which deportation of illegal immigrants committing other crimes would have produced better outcomes for victims. Criticisms of Harris have cropped up, as she was appointed "border czar" in 2021 by the Biden administration and was put in charge of stemming the flow of illegal immigration by getting to the "root causes" of the problem.