Texas held the largest naturalization ceremony this week that the Lone Star State’s capital has ever seen. The ceremony was used to assault Donald Trump, the Second Amendment, and the death penalty before 1,210 new U.S. citizens and their families and friends.
The Guest of Honor, Democrat Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt told the participants flanked by voter registration tables, “I encourage everyone to register to vote and hopefully, not for that guy who is against immigrants.”
The husband of one of the participants, Kyle Hood, told Breitbart Texas that he was offended that the ceremony was used by the county judge from Austin to advance a political agenda. Hood says he has no particular allegiance to any political party, but thought the event should not have been used to tell new citizens who to vote for president.
He added, “While I do not speak for immigrants, when she was saying that I was thinking the guy [Trump] she was talking about is not against immigrants, he is against illegal immigrants.” He said he thought that most of those sworn in that day would feel the same way, that these newly naturalized citizens were for legal immigration. He was so taken-back at the time she made the comment, he actually wrote it down.
Hood told Breitbart Texas, “I have a problem with her using her title and position to make what I thought was particularly political comments to a captive audience.”
He called the event “a big-to-do” that was an otherwise very solemn ceremony. An army band from Camp Mabry was there, and participants had been told to dress respectfully for what would be a dignified and special service. He just had “a beef” with promoting a political agenda.
The San Antonio resident said he did not think Eckhardt should have used her less than five minute speech to hit the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, gun control, or the death penalty.
Hood said that the county judge told a story about a Muslim man from Bangladesh who was shot in the chest by a man with a gun. The man was not expected to live but somehow he survived and ended up showing great forgiveness for his attacker, she said. In fact, the Muslim immigrant even sued the government in order to fight the attacker’s execution.
According to her political campaign website, Eckhardt touts deep Democratic roots. Her mother was an aide to Lyndon Johnson and Molly Ivins, and her father was the late Democratic Congressman Bob Eckhardt. When she died, The New York Times called Ivins a “liberal newspaper columnist who delighted in skewering politicians.” The publication noted that Ivins told People magazine that she was the kind of humorist that “holds people up to public contempt and ridicule.”
Over 1,200 immigrants from 97 countries were sworn-in, according to Time Warner Cable News in Austin. Federal district court Judge Robert Pitman presided over the ceremony.
The naturalization ceremony was held just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that kept President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty order from being implemented. The Court was tied and a 4-4 vote left a lower appellate court decision blocking the executive order, as reported by Breitbart Texas. The State of Texas sued the federal government after the issuance of the order and led a 26-state coalition against the Obama Administration.
Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
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