Members of New York City-based vigilante group the Guardian Angels physically engaged with an unidentified individual in Times Square during a live Fox News appearance Tuesday, with founder Curtis Sliwa claiming that his associates had confronted a “migrant” who had been “shoplifting.”
Sliwa said the individual was taken to jail by the police, and a Fox News chyron similarly told viewers the person had been “arrested.”
The NYPD did not respond to a request for more information about what had transpired.
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On Sean Hannity’s primetime show, Sliwa appeared for an interview about Mayor Eric Adams’ newly announced pilot program, which gives migrant families prepaid credit cards for food—with the amount depending on family size and income. A failed Republican candidate in the 2021 mayoral race that Adams won, Sliwa said he vehemently opposed the initiative.
After Hannity suggested that that money would be better off going to the city’s homeless veterans, Sliwa’s attention was quickly diverted to a disturbance behind the camera, where a handful of other Guardian Angels had gathered.
“Well, in fact our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner of 42nd and 7th while all this has taken place. They’ve taken over!” he exclaimed with his hands up.
The camera then whirled around to capture Guardian Angels surrounding an unidentified person in black. They then brought the individual to the ground and appeared to try to restrain them.
Once things had settled down later in the show, Hannity returned to Sliwa for his account of what had happened.
“Well, he had been shoplifting first,” Sliwa claimed. “The Guardian Angels spotted him, stopped him, he resisted, and let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He is sucking concrete. The cops scraped him off the asphalt. He’s on his way to jail.”
“But they’ll cut him loose,” Sliwa then predicted, before criticizing migrants in general. “We’ve got to take 42nd street back, Sean. These illegals think they own this street. They think they rule the night. This is our country. If they can’t abide by the rules, then we’re going to kick them back from where they came.”
Sliwa added later of his group’s stated mission: “You shoplift, commit crime, assault people—you don’t belong in our country. We are going to make sure you pay a price for that. We’ve got to fight for what we know is right. You saw a little bit of this.”
