Jeff Sessions dines at Mexican restaurant before speech against uncontrolled immigration

Attorney General Jeff Sessions dined at a decades-old Mexican restaurant on Friday before giving a speech on the dangers of uncontrolled immigration in Houston, Texas.

The Houston Chronicle reported that Sessions’ motorcade was spotted at La Mexicana, a restaurant known in the area for its authentic Mexican dishes.

“I don’t know why they picked this place,” Zulema Gonzales, La Mexicana’s general manager, told the Chronicle, adding that other high-profile political guests, such as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had dined at the restaurant in the past.

{mosads}

Sessions later spoke that day at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, where he urged the public to support “common sense” immigration enforcement measures he said the Trump administration was employing.

“This should be obvious: if we want to reduce violent crime we should reduce illegal immigrant crime,” Sessions said Friday, according to the Chronicle. “If you’re not prepared to lock up dangerous criminals to protect the public, you’re not fulfilling your responsibility.”

One Houston resident blasted Sessions on a Reddit thread Friday over the report, saying they had noticed Sessions’ motorcade outside the restaurant. The thread, posted on the local Houston page, was near the top of a list of most popular posts on the board Friday afternoon.

“Did Jeff Sessions actually go get breakfast tacos before talking about a nonexistent brown immigrant crime wave? I mean, DAMN, bro,” the user wrote.

Several Trump administration officials have faced public backlash while dining out at restaurants for their participation in the administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. The policy drew widespread bipartisan backlash after it resulted in the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was followed out of a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., by protesters earlier this year during the height of backlash over the family separation policy.

-Updated Aug. 11