Trump's acting immigration chief blamed the stabbing at a rabbi's New York home on amnesty laws for 'illegal immigrants'

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
33,981
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What is our country coming to when a government official can attack a United states Citizen because that citizen`s family were immigrants who got amnesty under the 1986 law amnesty law for illegal immigrants!
Something is very screwed up in this country when you can be a legal United States Citizen and be attacked just because your family were immigrants!!
Even the dyed in the die hard Republicans on these forums should be able to see how this is totally wrong!!

  • In a now-deleted Monday tweet, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli blamed a Saturday stabbing at a rabbi's home in New York on illegal immigration and amnesty laws.
  • On Saturday, an attacker wielding a machete wounded five Jewish individuals gathering in the home of a Hasidic rabbi to light candles at around 10 p.m. ET for the last night of Hanukah in Monsey, New York.
  • Cuccinelli tweeted that Grafton Thomas, the accused assailant, is "the US citizen son of an illegal alien who got amnesty under the 1986 law amnesty law for illegal immigrants," adding, "apparently, American values did not take hold in this family."
The Monsey attack comes amid a troubling spike in violent crimes targeting primarily Orthodox Jewish communities in New York.
In a now-deleted Monday tweet, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli blamed a Saturday stabbing at a rabbi's home in New York on illegal immigration and amnesty laws.
An attacker wielding a machete wounded five Jewish individuals gathering in the home of a Hasidic rabbi to light candles at around 10 p.m. ET for the last night of Hanukah in Monsey, New York, a town with a large Orthodox Jewish population located about 25 miles outside New York City in Rockland County.
Authorities have taken a man named Grafton Thomas, age 38, into custody as the main suspect for the attack, locating him in Harlem on Sunday and charging him with five counts of attempted murder and one count of first-degree burglary. Thomas has pleaded not guilty to all six charges, according to The New York Times.
On Monday, The Times further reported that federal prosecutors have filed additional hate crimes charges against Thomas after federal officials found both handwritten journal entries referencing "Nazi culture" and browser history from Thomas' phone showing he had searched for the locations of "Zionist temples" in the region.
Cuccinelli tweeted on Monday that Thomas, the accused assailant, is "the US citizen son of an illegal alien who got amnesty under the 1986 law amnesty law for illegal immigrants," adding, "apparently, American values did not take hold in this family, at least this one violent and apparently bigoted son."
A lawyer representing Thomas' family released a statement saying that Thomas had "a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations" but "no known history of anti-Semitism and was raised in a home which embraced and respected all religions and races."
The Monsey attack comes amid a troubling spike in violent crimes targeting primarily Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, as well as a recent shooting that killed three people in a Jewish kosher market across the river from New York in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City has pledged to increase police presence in neighborhoods of Brooklyn with large Hasidic populations, including Williamsburg and Borough Park.
Cuccinelli was appointed as the acting director of USCIS in May 2019, where has faced criticism for trying to expedite asylum proceedings and for introducing a controversial "public charge" rule that would deny green cards to immigrants deemed likely to take advantage of public benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing.
Cuccinelli, who previously served as a state senator from Virginia and the state's attorney general, has pushed hardline positions on both illegal and legal immigration for well over a decade.
Cuccinelli, who previously served as a state senator from Virginia and the state's attorney general, has pushed hardline positions on both illegal and legal immigration for well over a decade.
As ThinkProgress and The New Republic reported during Cuccinelli's 2013 gubernatorial campaign, he sponsored anti-immigrant resolutions and legislation during his time in the state Senate.
His efforts included introducing a joint resolution to call for Congress to convene a constitutional convention to amend the 14th amendment of the US Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship and only extend citizenship to people born in the US who have at least one US citizen parent.
Cuccinelli also introduced a draconian bill that would have allowed Virginia companies to fire employees for speaking a language other than English in the workplace and disqualify them from receiving unemployment benefits.
Then-majority leader Dick Salsaw called the proposal "the most mean-spirited piece of legislation I have seen in my 30 years down here," as The Washington Post reported at the time.
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
16,022
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This is just another example of the GOP playbook to vilify immigrants by using anecdotes. This one is an even further stretch than that SF shooting case where the shooter himself was an actual illegal immigrant. This attacker was born in the US. His father was initially here illegally, but was legalized when Reagan provided amnesty in 1986. How this attack relates to "illegal immigrants" when the attacker was born and raised here is beyond me.

My favorite part of Cuccinelli's nonsense is this:

Cuccinelli tweeted that Grafton Thomas, the accused assailant, is "the US citizen son of an illegal alien who got amnesty under the 1986 law amnesty law for illegal immigrants," adding, "apparently, American values did not take hold in this family."

Because American citizens whose parents were also American citizens never kill people? Nope, never happens because killing is not an "American value." Apparently, one must either be an immigrant or at least the child of one in order to have a desire to kill. Something about being in America for x number of generations just breeds all the violent tendencies out of people. According to Cuccinelli's "logic," if we just stop all immigration our murder rate will eventually fall to zero, once all the existing immigrants and their progeny have acclimated to our peaceful ways.

I wonder how many generations Cuccinelli's family has been in the US from wherever they came (Italy?) Apparently it hasn't been enough to breed out the stupid. Unless stupid is also an "American value" along with peacefulness.
 
Nov 25, 2013
32,083
11,718
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This is just another example of the GOP playbook to vilify immigrants by using anecdotes. This one is an even further stretch than that SF shooting case where the shooter himself was an actual illegal immigrant. This attacker was born in the US. His father was initially here illegally, but was legalized when Reagan provided amnesty in 1986. How this attack relates to "illegal immigrants" when the attacker was born and raised here is beyond me.

My favorite part of Cuccinelli's nonsense is this:



Because American citizens whose parents were also American citizens never kill people? Nope, never happens because killing is not an "American value." Apparently, one must either be an immigrant or at least the child of one in order to have a desire to kill. Something about being in America for x number of generations just breeds all the violent tendencies out of people. According to Cuccinelli's "logic," if we just stop all immigration our murder rate will eventually fall to zero, once all the existing immigrants and their progeny have acclimated to our peaceful ways.

I wonder how many generations Cuccinelli's family has been in the US from wherever they came (Italy?) Apparently it hasn't been enough to breed out the stupid. Unless stupid is also an "American value" along with peacefulness.

some family history is included in this article:

 

Meghan54

Lifer
Oct 18, 2009
11,433
4,949
136
This is just another example of the GOP playbook to vilify immigrants by using anecdotes. This one is an even further stretch than that SF shooting case where the shooter himself was an actual illegal immigrant. This attacker was born in the US. His father was initially here illegally, but was legalized when Reagan provided amnesty in 1986. How this attack relates to "illegal immigrants" when the attacker was born and raised here is beyond me.

My favorite part of Cuccinelli's nonsense is this:



Because American citizens whose parents were also American citizens never kill people? Nope, never happens because killing is not an "American value." Apparently, one must either be an immigrant or at least the child of one in order to have a desire to kill. Something about being in America for x number of generations just breeds all the violent tendencies out of people. According to Cuccinelli's "logic," if we just stop all immigration our murder rate will eventually fall to zero, once all the existing immigrants and their progeny have acclimated to our peaceful ways.

I wonder how many generations Cuccinelli's family has been in the US from wherever they came (Italy?) Apparently it hasn't been enough to breed out the stupid. Unless stupid is also an "American value" along with peacefulness.


Well, considering every single white person in the U.S. is just a child of an immigrant, guess Cuccinelli's theory is out the window.
 
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woolfe9998

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