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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vice President Kamala Harris, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former California attorney general, is facing fresh criticism over her role in sanctuary-city policies before the 2015 murder of 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle — and it’s reminded many that Democrats have repeatedly stopped “Kate’s Law” from passing the Senate.
Congressional Republicans crafted the legislation, also called the Stop Illegal Reentry Act, in response to the murder in San Francisco‚ where Harris was district attorney from 2004 to 2011, by 56-year-old Mexican national Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate.
Garcia-Zarate had seven felony convictions at the time of his final arrest and had been deported from the United States to Mexico six times. Each time he re-entered the country illegally.
The case sparked a firestorm during another presidential race.
Donald Trump, the once-and-current Republican candidate, said then the killing was “yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately.”
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton even admitted San Francisco had “made a mistake” by allowing Garcia-Zarate to remain in the country.
Harris was criticized for contributing to sanctuary-city policies during her tenures as DA and AG that some say allowed the illegally residing gunman to remain in the United States for far too long.
As Frisco DA, Harris signed onto a newspaper ad decrying “anti-immigrant proposals.”
“We are a sanctuary city, a city of refuge, and we always will be,” her spokeswoman said.
Now that she’s running for president, those criticisms have returned in full force — along with Democrats such as Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown who’ve repeatedly blocked legislation to help prevent other such murders.
“Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown are champions of sanctuary cities and amnesty policies that result in tragedies like the murders of Kate Steinle and Laken Riley. Harris and Brown continually side with illegal immigrants over law and order and the safety of Americans,” the campaign of Brown’s opponent, Republican Colombian-American businessman Bernie Moreno, told The Post.
Brown enters the story in 2015 when he and other Senate Dems first helped block Kate’s Law, which would mandate five-year prison sentences for illegal immigrants with felonies apprehended in the United States.
More than 30 Senate Democrats blocked a vote for the 2015 bill that included Kate’s Law and another provision to strip sanctuary cities of federal funding. Brown complained it would cost taxpayers money “by increasing the federal prison population.”
Kate’s Law got another chance in 2017, but Democrats, including then-California Sen. Harris, killed the bill again.
Harris repeatedly slammed Republican immigration policy, telling Voice of San Diego in July 2017 that the Trump “administration’s immigration policies create a culture of fear — and so we have to stand up in California and fight for who we are as a country and our ideals.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has tried to move Kate’s Law forward in every Congress, the last in 2023, but it has repeatedly died in the Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee.
Brown’s office didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“Bottom line: Kamala Harris helped create the sanctuary city policies that allowed Steinle and other’s murders to occur, and Sherrod Brown blocked a legislative fix from becoming law,” Moreno’s campaign told The Post.
Harris is President Biden’s border czar, tasked with curtailing the illegal-immigration crisis. Her performance on the issue has therefore become a major issue for her campaign.
A recent Gallup Poll found that more than half of Americans support reducing immigration levels, the highest percentage since 2001.
Garcia-Zarate spent seven years in prison for possessing an illegal firearm — he was acquitted of murder charges — before being turned over to probation and ordered to leave the United States in 2022.
“If you return to this country again and you are back in front of me, I will not spare you. Let this be your last warning: Do not return to this country,” Obama-nominated US District Judge Vince Chhabria said before sending him to Texas for sentencing for not reporting his location after a San Francisco jail released him just months before he shot Steinle.
Recent polls show a tight race between Harris and Trump for the White House — which makes old ghosts like this more frightening than ever.
