Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday awkwardly posed with kids for a photo-op in which she weirdly pretended to sign a radical anti-ICE sanctuary law that she’d already inked for approval.
During the showboaty event, the gov sat stiffly on a couch between two children who looked plucked from a hostage flick as they stared ahead with desperately bored facial expressions.
One of the kids, who wore a Road New York shirt pushing an ICE ban, had a coughing fit and left in the middle of the discussion.
Shortly after, standing behind a podium addressing reporters, Hochul then butchered the pronunciation of a few of the attendees’ names.
“Natalia? Is Natalia here? You want to pronounce that for me? Help me out here,” she said before struggling to make out New York Immigration Coalition President Murad Awawdeh’s last name and incorrectly identifying a Make the Road official.
“That’s why I always just call him Murad,” she said, fumbling the remarks.
Hochul painstakingly used 11 pens to sign the “bill” — one for each letter in her name — during the photo-op, which was staged to boost her new sanctuary-state legislation.
“Use that in school to impress all your teachers,” the governor, said giving one of the pens to a kid and giving him a hug.
In reality, the immigration measures she was supposedly signing into law were already included in one of the 10 bills that constitute the state budget called Public Protection and General Government. Hochul actually signed that bill Wednesday.
The legislation is some of the most sweeping statewide anti-ICE measures in the country – barring local cops and most governmental employees from contacting and coordinating with immigration authorities outside of major crimes and when the feds present a judicial warrant.
It also restricts ICE officers from wearing masks and bans them from operating in “sensitive locations” such as public parks, schools and hospitals, as well as giving New Yorkers the ability to sue agents that violate their constitutional rights in state court.
-Additional reporting by Natalie O’Neill