GoFundMe page raises money to send mariachi band, taco truck to troll NY lawyer who threatened to call ICE on restaurant employees

An activist is raising money to send a mariachi band and taco truck to the offices of a New York City lawyer who threatened to call immigration authorities on Spanish-speaking restaurant employees on Wednesday.

A video of New York attorney Aaron Schlossberg went viral Wednesday after he lashed out verbally at workers in a Midtown Manhattan deli and threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

{mosads}“Your staff is speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English,” Schlossberg says in the video. “My guess is they’re not documented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country.”

Soon after the video’s circulation, an activist set up a GoFundMe page, dubbed “Mariachis for Aaron,” to raise money to send a mariachi band and taco truck to Schlossberg’s office. The page has raised $1,094 of its $500 goal and credits Twitter account “ALT-Immigration,” an immigration activist account, with the idea.

“Raising $500 to send a Mariachi band to cheer up the staff and attorneys at The Law Office of Aaron M. Schlossberg Esq. P.L.L.C. after a difficult day,” the fundraiser’s description reads. “We are requesting the band to sing the famous, endearing, and warm Spanish children song, La Cucaracha, the cockroach.”

The organizers said in a series of updates to the fundraising page that a local New York mariachi band has offered to play the concert for free, and that they will use the money to pay for a taco truck and “party accessories” like piñatas.

The most recent update says that the date and time of the event will not be disclosed after users of the website 4chan, an online platform notorious for hosting white supremacists and alt-right users, “noticed and want to send people there on Friday to counter it.”

Schlossberg and his offices have faced a wave of backlash after the incident, including a petition to have him disbarred and a stream of negative reviews on the office’s Yelp page.