Kenneth Cuccinelli, a top immigration official in the Trump administration, faced blowback Monday after saying the man accused of stabbing five Orthodox Jews in New York was the son of an “illegal alien” and came from a family lacking “American values.”
Little was known about Grafton Thomas, the suspect in the attack in Monsey, New York, when Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, took to Twitter to say that Thomas’ father came to the country illegally but gained amnesty under a far-reaching immigration bill signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
“Apparently, American values did not take hold among this entire family, at least this one violent, and apparently bigoted, son,” Cuccinelli wrote in a tweet that was deleted shortly after its posting.