Thursday at a town hall, socialist lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was heckled and accused of prioritizing the welfare of unauthorized immigrants over that of the constituents she was elected to represent.
On Thursday, a town hall organized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) which was supposed to highlight the apparent advantages of the Green New Deal infuriated a number of attendees to the point of shedding tears of rage, as Fox News reported.
Two attendants heckled the socialist lawmaker while she was speaking at an event in Queens, New York City, where she was accused of being more concerned with undocumented immigrants than with the constituents she had been elected to represent.
One of the hecklers went so far as to say that he is challenging Ocasio-Cortez for her congressional seat due to frustration with the job she has done while in office.
"My name is Jonathan David Rinaldi and I'm running for Congress against AOC, the Green New Deal is a scam," Rinaldi shouted as Ocasio-Cortez was championing environmental justice provisions and climate change policies under the deal. "They’re giving the NYCHA apartments away; they’re giving illegal aliens $10,000 a day… I want you to debate me AOC, debate me."
New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA as the candidate described it, is an agency tasked with overseeing the city’s public housing projects and Rinaldi told Fox News Digital he is of the opinion that lawmakers are trying to move illegal immigrants into those developments at the expense of citizens.
On stage, Ocasio-Cortez smiled as security attempted to remove Rinaldi. However, a second man got up from his seat and started yelling as well: "Secure the border now," the man barked at Ocasio-Cortez while waving his finger at her. "You haven’t said one word about violent Venezuelan migrants, illegals.
"You don’t care, all you care about is illegal aliens and their votes. You don’t care about your constituents. That’s all you care about, you’re a disgrace."
Backers of Ocasio-Cortez began chanting "AOC, AOC" and clapping, quickly overpowering the man. Last month, migrants brutally attacked the New York Police Department, which seemed to be what the man was alluding to in his comments.
AOC's security removed Rinaldi from the facility without an answer being given as to what the city would do to cope with the problem. But as he was being led out of the venue, he shouted: "Every single one of us is being sold out by people that have brought illegals here to vote."
Once more, he turned and heckled the congresswoman after getting into a heated argument with an Ocasio-Cortez supporter, saying "You only represent the illegal aliens."
"Well clearly I don't, because I'm an elected member of Congress, so keep it pushing bro," Ocasio-Cortez snapped back.
Following the men's expulsion from the venue, Ocasio-Cortez addressed her position on immigration, saying "Clearly, this community -- Astoria, Jackson Heights, also across the Bronx – clearly supports progressive immigration policies that welcomes all of our neighbors."
"We clearly support a path to citizenship, we clearly support ending draconian immigration policies and that is why you all… support my representation of our community in Congress because we have had enough."
There was a round of applause after she spoke, and one woman even yelled out, "thank you."
"We have seen the voices that are anti-immigrant in this country are very very loud but they are very very few and we have to look around and realize how many of us are here in support of our neighbors and an acknowledgment of the fact that virtually all of us are descendants of immigrants, or indigenous people, or enslaved people," Ocasio-Cortez said.
The hecklers who AOC had removed from her event were demonstrating illegal immigration, and not all immigration, however, the congresswoman's comments seemed to pit those looking to support legal immigration with those who support illegal migrants being given copious amounts of federal dollars once they sneak into the country
Although voting is not allowed for illegal or legal migrants, in 2021 the New York City Council approved a bill that would have granted voting rights to non-citizens who had been in the nation for 30 days or more.
Upon becoming mayor of York in January 2022, Eric Adams signed the bill into law. However, it was later determined to be unlawful, and an appeal to the decision was rejected by an appeals court in New York.
According to a Fox News study, the number of illegal migrants who crossed the southwest border under President Biden's watch exceeds the population of 36 individual states, with over 7.3 million.
The mayor's office reports that over 178,600 migrants have been housed in New York City since spring of 2022, with around 65,000 individuals still under the city's supervision.
