Washington, D.C.—President Trump’s Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, made the racist claim yesterday that the poem Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants to America was only referring to “people coming from Europe.”

“We here in Virginia have known for years that Ken Cuccinelli is a racist extremist, but now the entire country is learning too. Comments about immigration only being acceptable if it comes from certain people in Europe are baldly racist and completely unacceptable coming from someone who is supposed to be in charge of our entire immigration system,” Anna Scholl, Executive Director of Progress Virginia said. “We want to live in a country like the poem on the Statue of Liberty describes—one that welcomes everyone, from all countries, income levels, races, and religions, to come and build a life where we can all work together and create thriving communities.” 

This is not Cuccinelli’s first time making racist remarks on the news. Speaking on a D.C. radio program in 2012, Cuccinelli said “It is worse than our immigration policy. You can’t break up rat families…and you can’t even kill ‘em.”  Ken Cuccinelli served as Attorney General of Virginia from 2010 to 2014. He ran for governor in 2013 and lost the election to Governor Terry McAuliffe. Cuccinelli’s radical positions on immigration, abortion access, climate change, and equal rights for LGBTQ Virginians defined the race and drove his defeat.