Trump Goes on Offensive, Starting With an Attack on Harris

It was a reference to the case of Alexander Izaguirre, an undocumented immigrant convicted of selling cocaine in 2008. He was a participant in Back on Track, an initiative spearheaded by Ms. Harris that placed young, first-time drug offenders who pleaded guilty to their crimes into a jobs program rather than jail.

Mr. Trump’s attack on Ms. Harris was an echo of the Willie Horton episode during the 1988 presidential race between Vice President George Bush and Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts. Mr. Bush’s campaign and its allies repeatedly invoked Mr. Horton — a Black prisoner in Massachusetts who, while released on a furlough program, raped a white woman — to suggest Mr. Dukakis was soft on crime.

In July 2008, Mr. Izaguirre snatched a woman’s purse and jumped into a car. When the woman jumped onto the car’s hood, the driver slammed on the brakes and the woman was thrown to the sidewalk, The Los Angeles Times reported in 2009.

When she learned of the case, Ms. Harris said that year that Mr. Izaguirre’s inclusion in the program was a mistake, one that she had since fixed by requiring would-be participants to provide “everything from Social Security cards to whatever it is that they can produce” to show that they are in the United States legally.

At the time, 113 offenders had successfully completed the program, while 99 had failed and been sent back into the court system. Ms. Harris said in 2009 that Mr. Izaguirre was one of seven undocumented immigrants in the program, but was the only one who failed, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.