Fox news today:
Acting deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli was reportedly forced to leave an event on Thanksgiving eve after former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley blasted him for carrying out the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
The incident allegedly took place at the Dubliner, an Irish pub on Capitol Hill where Cuccinelli and O’Malley were said to be attending an event with fellow graduates of Gonzaga College High School, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the encounter.
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“Martin O’Malley just drove Ken Cuccinelli out of the Dubliner in DC w/ a passion-laced and shame-invoking tirade on behalf of immigrant refugee children!!!” Siobhan Arnold, who’s identified as a Villanova University media relations associate and was reportedly at the bar, tweeted late Wednesday.
Speaking to the Post, Arnold said O’Malley used Cuccinelli’s grandparents in a bid to shame him, a remark which she said Cuccinelli barely responded to.
“O’Malley was shouting,” Arnold told the Post. “I don’t think Cuccinelli was responding. I think he’s like, ‘Time to go. Just got here and I’m leaving.’ He pretty much retreated.”
O’Malley, the former Democratic governor of Maryland from 2006 to 2014, and a 2016 presidential candidate who withdrew his White House bid after an early defeat in the Iowa caucuses, defended his actions to the Post.
“We all let him know how we felt about him putting refugee immigrant kids in cages — certainly not what we were taught by the Jesuits at Gonzaga,” O’Malley said in a text to the Post, adding that Cuccinelli is “the son of immigrant grandparents who cages children for a fascist president.”
A DHS spokesman did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Cuccinelli has been known as one of the Trump administration’s most vocal immigration hardliners. He was appointed acting deputy DHS secretary earlier this month under new acting Secretary Chad Wolf, after serving as acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director. Cuccinelli, along with acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, had been one of the favorites among immigration hawks to lead the department.
But Cuccinelli is not the first Trump administration official to be harassed for his work involving enforcement of President Trump’s immigration policies.
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Former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was repeatedly heckled