Protests that broke out at a Manhattan courtroom over the arrests of several immigrants went beyond immigration and are instead a criminal matter, former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told Newsmax on Sunday.
“What you’re seeing here has absolutely nothing to do with immigration,” Cuccinelli commented on Newsmax’s “Sunday Agenda.” “This is a violent protest, and violence is illegal.”
Last Wednesday, ICE officers arrested nearly two dozen protesters, including a minister, who blocked the paths of two vans agents were using to transport immigrants detained at the courthouse.
New York Police Department officers helped clear the protesters, drawing criticism from some about the cooperation between the city and ICE.
“To see the police actually arresting people is encouraging, though, given their DA, who knows what will happen,” said Cuccinelli. “I would much rather see the police arrest these folks and they be handed over to federal custody for prosecution for federal offenses related to federal facilities, because I just have no faith in the New York City so-called justice system.”
Meanwhile, the asylum process has clogged up the system, where the Remain in Mexico program during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, which kept asylum seekers out of the country while their court proceedings were going on, worked, said Cuccinelli.
“The same career immigration officers found 1% to 2% of those asylum claims to be legitimate,” he said. “These are the same immigration officers who, on average, before that, were finding about a quarter of asylum claims to be legitimate. That tells you that the people coming and the BS they’re feeding people is an excuse… it’s a fraud on our system.”
Further, there are no countries in the Western Hemisphere “that you can legitimately claim are threatening citizens,” said Cuccinelli, adding the asylum cases could be dismissed for that reason.
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