77 WABC midday host Curtis Sliwa was one of several protesters arrested at a Wednesday rally in Queens.
Hundreds of protest gathered at a newly opened “tent city” for migrants in the New York borough. The site is expected to house nearly 1,000 asylum seekers.
During the protest, Sliwa refused police orders to vacate the street before being arrested, a report from The New York Post claims. Sliwa was attempting to block the entrance and street in front of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital where the city is attempting to locate the migrants.
During an appearance on The Dominic Carter Show on 77 WABC early Thursday, Sliwa joked “I had no idea that was a precinct in the middle of nowhere. Yet, you learn something every day of your life for 69 years.”
When asked why he participated in the civil disobedience, Curtis Sliwa said it was a matter of principle.
“This is crazy,” Sliwa said of the decision to house migrants on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. “When you combine it with the number of patients who sometimes walk off the grounds of the New York state psychiatric facility here it Creekmore and there are a number who have done that. And now you have 1000 single able-bodied young men with nothing to do nowhere to go in the middle of nowhere.”
