A ‘migrant’ who was tackled by a New York City-based anti-immigrant vigilante group during a live interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, is actually an American citizen.
On Tuesday night Hannity interviewed Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and a former GOP mayoral nominee, in a segment meant to highlight disorder caused by illegal migrants bussed to New York City.
Members of the group ran off camera in the middle of the interview and the camera turned to show them roughing up an unidentified man on the sidewalk.
“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner of 42nd and 7th while all this has taken place,” Sliwa told Hannity. “They’ve taken over!”
Sliwa accused the unidentified man of “shoplifting” adding, “let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He is sucking concrete.”
However, New York Police Department officials told CNN that the unidentified man was not shoplifting and that he is a 23-year-old New Yorker from the Bronx, not a migrant.
The man was reportedly attempting to disrupt the live interview when the group attacked him.
“On Tuesday February 6 at 21:33 police responded to a 911 call for a ‘disorderly male,’” police said in a statement to CNN. “Upon arrival officers were informed that the male had repeatedly attempted to interfere with and disrupt a live interview. The male was issued a summons for disorderly conduct.”
Sliwa said he thought the man was a migrant because he was “speaking Spanish” and they had seen him with other Spanish speakers during previous ‘patrols.’
The Guardian Angels was founded in the late 1970s by Sliwa. He has admitted to fabricating stories of criminal behavior in the past for publicity.
