- A man said he'd call ICE on two women working at a restaurant because they spoke Spanish.
- "Your clients and your staff are speaking Spanish to staff when they should be speaking English," he said. "This is America."
- The video of the confrontation went viral.
- Activists have identified him as the Manhattan attorney Aaron Schlossberg, whose Facebook and Yelp pages received a flood of negative reviews, but INSIDER hasn't independently verified his identity.
A man was caught on video threatening two women working at a restaurant in Manhattan, saying he would call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement because they spoke Spanish.
"Your clients and your staff are speaking Spanish to staff when they should be speaking English," he said in a confrontation with the manager. "This is America."
The video went viral on Facebook after Edward Suazo posted it Tuesday. He said his wife and her friend witnessed the argument at a Fresh Kitchen in midtown.
"My guess is they're undocumented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of them taken out of my country," the man said in the video. "If they have the balls to come here and live off my money — I pay for their welfare. I pay for their ability to be here."
After activist and journalist Shaun King posted the video to Twitter, activists identified the man as Aaron Schlossberg, an attorney with his own law firm with an office near the restaurant.
INSIDER hasn't independently verified the man's identity and Schlossberg didn't respond to multiple requests for comment. Schlossberg's LinkedIn page indicates he studied abroad in Spain while in college and is fluent in Spanish.
Issac Saul, an editor at the publication A Plus, saw a man who appeared to be Schlossberg last year at a protest, standing with people carrying pro-Donald Trump signs. The rally was held to oppose a speech by the Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour and to support far-right counter-speakers, who included Islamophobic activist Pamela Geller and commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, best known for appearing to condone pedophilia and coining phrases like "feminism is cancer."
At the rally, the man who appeared to be Schlossberg shouted at members of Neturei Karta — a fringe group of extremist Jews who are defined by their commitment to anti-Zionism based on a reading of scripture that forbids the presence of Jews in the land of Israel until the coming of the messiah.
"You are not a Jew," the man said to the Neturei Karta members. "He's pretending to be Jewish and he's making everybody else feel like that's what Jews think."
—Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) May 25, 2017
After King and other left-leaning activists identified the man as Schlossberg, his law firm's Facebook and Yelp pages were flooded with negative comments.
Schlossberg gave $500 to President Trump's presidential campaign in 2016 according to records reviewed by The Forward.
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