Gov. Kathy Hochul used a speech at a Sunday church service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. to shamelessly grandstand against ICE – and claimed Manhattan’s liberal DA could one day be the attorney general.
Hochul invoked the hymn, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” during her address from the pulpit of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem as she addressed the crowd of more than 1,000 worshippers, then casually praised District Attorney Alvin Bragg after she flubbed his title.
“I never thought I would see what is happening to our country,” the Democrat told the congregation at the historic church on West 138th Street.
“I think about the struggles that are talked about in that beautiful song ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’” she said, referencing the 1900 hymn, before attempting to draw a clunky analogy between African-American history and illegal immigration.
“Today, we have people struggling because they’re in fear. They are too afraid to go to church because an ICE agent may take them out of this place and take them to a detention center. Separate them from their families. That is what is happening in America today,” Gov. Hochul opined.
“So I have said in my state of the state, no ICE agent can come into a sacred place like a church, or a hospital or a day care center or a school without a warrant signed by a judge,” she added. “They cannot violate this sacred space.
“We are not surrendering our rights. And we’re not going backwards, my friends! Not now. Not ever!”
The governor also used Sunday’s sermon at the 200-year-old church to praise Manhattan’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg, despite insisting she wasn’t getting “political” during her address.
“We also have another fighter to keep people safe and that is our Attorney General,” Hochul said, before correcting herself.
“I’m sorry, our District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Who knows, maybe he’ll be an Attorney General some day too, change the occupant of the White House,” the anti-Trump politician said.
The praise didn’t stop there.
“But I’m not here to get political, you know what I’m saying. But he [Bragg’s] been a great partner in bringing ideas to us in the legislature and myself on how to make our streets safer and they are safer,” Hochul said.
“Crime is down to record lows, particularly here in Manhattan, and I give him so much of the credit.”
